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Who We Are

This project is a partnership between the University of Washington (UW) (http://www.washington.edu/) , and the University of Nairobi (UN) (http://www.uonbi.ac.ke/) to work towards A Kenya Free of AIDS (KeFA). This draws on a 20 year collaboration between the two Universities to build capacity for HIV/AIDS research in Kenya. The purpose of the project is to provide a mechanism to facilitate the cross-disciplinary research needed to develop the next generation of integrated HIV/AIDS prevention strategies. KEFA will help to establish the mechanisms to promote the interaction between social science, public health and biomedical research. Our aims are:

1. To build capacity for rigorous social and behavioral science research on HIV/AIDS at the newly established University of Nairobi Centre for HIV Prevention and Research
2. To conduct foundational interdisciplinary research projects in HIV prevention.

As behavior changes are beginning to make progress in prevention, a range of new biomedical prevention interventions are coming available. Increasingly, it is recognized that biomedical and social/behavioral prevention efforts must work together for HIV prevention and treatment efforts to succeed. Current Phase III vaccines, for example, will not provide sterilizing immunity from HIV, but instead modulate the course of the infection. As a result, vaccination strategies must be pursued simultaneously with prevention of secondary HIV transmission. HIV protocols for preventing mother-to-child transmission are encountering significant obstacles at the stage of service delivery. It is clear we need an integrated scientific approach to ensure that our biomedical advances reach their full potential in reducing the population burden of HIV and AIDS.

This project is funded through the National Institutes of Health and the University of Washington.

CHIVPR

The University of Nairobi’s (http://chivpr.uonbi.ac.ke/) Centre for HIV Prevention and Research (CHIVPR) was established as an interdisciplinary centre at the University of Nairobi. It is a result of a developmental process that has its roots in the Strengthening STD/HIV/AIDS Control Project in Kenya, a collaborative capacity building project between the University of Nairobi and University of Manitoba (November 1990 to 9th June, 2006).

The vision of the Centre is to develop the University of Nairobi into a leader in the pursuit, development, dissemination and preservation of knowledge regarding HIV prevention and the impact of AIDS in the context of the whole of Kenyan society. The ultimate goal is a Kenya free from AIDS. The CHIVPR seeks:

• To build the capacity of multisectoral partners to reduce HIV transmission and
• To mitigate the impact of HIV/AIDS on vulnerable populations through multisectoral evidence based interventions in the areas of programs, training and research.

PSRI

The Population Studies And Research Institute (PSRI) http://www.uonbi.ac.ke/faculties/faculty_page.php?fac_code=47 of the University of Nairobi was established in 1976 with the mandate to:

• Undertake postgraduate training of population scientists.
• Undertake research in the field of population and reproductive health.
• Provide technical backstopping to the Government of Kenya on matters of population and development, and population management.

PSRI is one of the institutes in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences (CHSS). The PSRI currently has eight faculty members, with expertise in fertility and mortality, migration and health, family demography, child and maternal health, adolescent sexuality, monitoring and evaluation, formal demography, and policy analysis. The PSRI has increasingly focused on reproductive health issues, and HIV/AIDS in particular. Almost all of the faculty at PSRI are involved in HIV/AIDS related research projects in Kenya (cf. their descriptions below and in the research projects).

UW CSDE

The UW Center for Studies in Demography and Ecology (CSDE) (http://csde.washington.edu/) is an NIH funded center in the College of Arts and Sciences that supports education, research and scholarly exchange in interdisciplinary population studies. CSDE brings together more than more than 70 affiliates from the UW and other Pacific Northwest institutions. On campus faculty affiliates come from the traditional social sciences of Anthropology, Economics, Geography, and Sociology, from Statistics, and from the schools of International Studies, Public Affairs, Public Health and Social Work. Off campus affiliates include population scientists at Battelle Institute's Center for Public Health Research and Evaluation (Seattle), Western Washington University (Bellingham, WA), and University of Victoria, (British Columbia, Canada).