[afro-nets] Findings paper 7: What's culture got to do with HIV and AIDS?

["Luca Dussin" <dussin.l@healthlink.org.uk>]

Findings paper 7: What's culture got to do with HIV and AIDS?
------------------------------------------------------------

Culture is increasingly being viewed as a means to reach and engage effectively with people, rather than being a barrier to effective HIV prevention and communication. Cultural approaches to HIV and AIDS are gaining currency as a way to promote engagement at community level and to build on shared values and norms. These approaches draw on common cultural experiences and appropriate culturally relevant language and idiom in communication programmes. Culture provides the necessary platform for communities to articulate in their own terms the implications of HIV and AIDS on their lives, beyond reductive biomedical models. They also help people to identify locally owned and culturally appropriate solutions, that go further than mere behaviour change. 

The following resources give a timely insight into the role of culture in HIV and AIDS contexts, drawing attention to the opportunities cultural approaches generate and the challenges they raise. 

What's culture got to do with HIV and AIDS?
Helen Gould, Healthlink Worldwide

This Findings paper, prepared by Creative Exchange, reports the initial findings from HIV/AIDS: The Creative Challenge, a project which is developing reflective discussion with field practitioners, and policy makers on the value of cultural approaches to HIV and AIDS. The paper provides an introductory analysis of the concept of culture, looks at examples and success stories of effective application of cultural approaches to HIV and AIDS communication, and sets out the terms of the debate around culture in the context of the current international HIV and AIDS strategy. It calls for a change in donor culture with a shift towards 'softer', qualitative monitoring and evaluation practices and for recognition of the cultural dimension and implications of the pandemic at local, national and international levels.

http://www.healthlink.org.uk/PDFs/findings7_hiv_culture.pdf

For more information about the HIV/AIDS: The Creative Challenge project and the work, initiatives and networking activities undertaken by Creative Exchange please visit: http://www.creativexchange.org 

Key list: What's culture got to do with HIV and AIDS?

Source International Information Support Centre

This Key list draws on the Findings paper and brings together key research studies, reports, manuals and case studies.  It contains a selection of resources available in Source's online databases at http://www.asksource.info  on the role of culture and cultural processes in development, and in the contexts of HIV prevention and HIV communication.

http://www.ids.ac.uk/sourcesearch/cf/keylists/keylist2.cfm?topic=az&search=QL_hivculture_DK07%20

For more information about HIV and AIDS, culture and development and related topics please visit Source website at http://www.asksource.info

Best wishes,

Luca Dussin
Information Officer
Healthlink Worldwide
56-64 Leonard St.
London EC2A 4JX
Tel: +44 20 7549 0257
Fax: +44 20 7549 0241
http://www.healthlink.org.uk
http://www.asksource.info