UM-GHRT focus on the social impact of HIV/AIDS and development of effective interventions, programs and policies

Researchers across the campus draw on the University of Michigan strengths in social science, policy development and evaluation research to elucidate the social impact of HIV/AIDS and to develop and evaluate effective educational, policy and intervention strategies.

At the School of Nursing Professor Antonia Villarruel’s research focuses on health promotion and sexual HIV risk reduction interventions in Latino populations. She has developed culturally based interventions to reduce sexual risk behavior among Latino adolescents and is currently conducting an intervention trial among Mexican adolescents. This project is evaluating whether the HIV risk-reduction intervention reduces self-reported HIV risk-associated sexual behavior compared with controls and whether the intervention’s effects are moderated by key individual, microsystem and macrosystem factors including cultural values.

At the School of Public Policy Professor James Levinsohn has collaborated with several institutions to establish a web page for a distance learning policy tool The Botswana Distance Learning Project: Turning Numbers into Knowledge. Use of the Botswana HIV/AIDS Impact Survey data facilitates students and practioners learning about how to investigate interesting policy issues in Botswana while, at the same time, learning the statistical programming tool Stata. This multi-year project is being funded by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation with collaborators from the University of Botswana and the University of Michigan. The Botswana Multiple Indicator Survey (BMIS) of 2000, that collected data on health indicators, served as the sampling frame for the Botswana HIV/AIDS Impact Survey (BAIS). The sample for the 2001 Botswana AIDS Impact Survey was designed to provide estimates of AIDS indicators at the national level, urban and rural areas, and for the fourteen districts.

At the Population Studies Center Professor John Knodel has conducted pioneering research on the impact of the AIDS epidemic on the elderly, including older-age parents in Southeast Asia. His current research focuses on Cambodia, Thailand and Vietnam and involves studies of the status of and support systems for the elderly as well as on the impact of the AIDS epidemic on older persons, and family change. HIV/AIDS is usually viewed as a disease affecting reproductive-age adults and their infant children. Discussions rarely consider the impact on older persons and, when they do, they typically focus on those who are infected themselves. Not only can older adults contract HIV themselves but a far greater number of older persons are affected through the infection of significant others, especially their adult children.The pathways through which they are affected include caregiving, coresidence and providing financial and material support, fostering orphaned grandchildren, losing current and old-age support that the child would have provide, and suffering grief and emotional stress. At the same time, by playing a major role in caregiving, older persons make significant contributions to the well-being of their infected sons and daughters and, by assuming the role of foster parents, to the grandchildren who are left behind. Led by Professor Knodel, a joint team of Thai and U.S. researchers from the University of Michigan, Tulane University, Chulalongkorn University, and Mahidol University have been studying the impact of AIDS on older persons in Thailand since 1998.

At the School of Public Health Associate Professor Rachel Snow conducts research on the operational and policy challenges of integrating HIV/AIDS into reproductive health programs in Burkina Faso and South Africa, and the social impact of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. (See for example: Sarker, M., A. Milkowski, T. Slanger, A. Gondos, A. Sanou, B. Kouyate, Rachel C. Snow “The role of HIV-related knowledge and ethnicity in determining HIV risk perception and willingness to undergo HIV testing among rural women in Burkina Faso.” AIDS and Behavior, 9(2): 243-249. 2005.) Dr. Snow brings to this research her experience on numerous expert committees at the World Health Organization dealing with issues such as gender, human rights, sexually transmitted infections, and contraceptive technology development. Read the feature on Professor Snow in the Spring/Summer 2006 School of Public Health's Findings Magazine.

At the School of Social Work Associate Professor Larry Gant’s research focuses on program evaluation of small and moderate-size human service and social action organizations in urban communities; and the creation, implementation and evaluation of community-based health promotion initiatives in substance abuse prevention, sexually transmitted diseases, and HIV/AIDS. His research forms part of the School of Social Work’s Global Program on Youth (supported by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation). This innovative program establishes broad-based groups of scholars, policy makers, and service providers who work together to address critical and timely issues related to children and youth. This project involves local and international, and inter-institutional and inter-professional collaborations. The model connects researchers, policy makers, and practitioners on a regular and sustained basis.