Overview of the Grant Initiative

This funding initiative comes in the form of a five-year R24 training grant from the National Institutes of Health in the US.  It addresses 2 recommendations from the recently published IOM review of the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief [PEPFAR]: expanding capacity building in partner countries; and evaluation of intervention efforts.  Previous grantees included Case Western Reserve University and Makerere University, Universities of Washington and Nairobi, Renmin University and UNC Chapel Hill, and Atma Jaya Catholic University (Indonesia) and University of Illinois-Chicago.  All grants combine institutional infrastructure and capacity-building activities for teaching and research in HIV social science.  The grant encourages inter-disciplinary teaching and research in HIV, both within and beyond social science disciplines.

The UCT-Brown Grant

The overall aim of the grant is to take advantage of the expertise at UCT and Brown, existing collaborations, and recent institutional growth at Brown (in the form of its new Division of Social and Behavioral Sciences in its School of Public Health) to support the development of UCT School of Public Health and Family Medicine’s new Division of Social and Behavioural and Sciences.

Specific Aims

1. Contribute to the academic curricular and training capacity at UCT’s School of Public Health and Family Medicine through collaboration with HIV social-behavioral scientists at Brown University.
2. Enhance the research environment for HIV social science by fostering a culture of excellence in interdisciplinary HIV social science research and by expanding collaborative and innovative research opportunities.
3. Build on the teaching and research investments in Aims 1 and 2 to develop social science research opportunities for trainees in three thematic areas:  Gender in HIV/AIDS Risk and Response, Antiretroviral Therapy Adherence and Expansion, and HIV Prevention for Women, Youth and Families (GAP).