Peer-reviewed article
Engaging community and governmental partners in improving health and mental health outcomes for children and adolescents impacted by HIV/AIDS in Uganda
Wilberforce Tumwesige, Phionah Namatovu, Ozge Sensoy Bahar, William Byansi, Mary M. McKay et al. ·
Summary
Written by AI, not yet AICS's view · claude-haiku-4-5-20251001This paper describes strategies used to engage community and government partners in Uganda while conducting three randomized clinical trials testing an evidence-based combination intervention for children and adolescents affected by HIV/AIDS. The authors emphasize four key engagement strategies: consultative meetings, stakeholder accountability meetings, task-shifting training, and policymaker engagement. The paper highlights how community partnerships and sustained relationships are critical for implementing complex interventions in low-resource settings and ensuring research responsiveness to local needs.
Key points
- Four stakeholder engagement strategies were used: consultative meetings, stakeholder accountability meetings, training of key players through task-shifting, and policymaker engagement
- Community collaborations and partnerships are especially critical when implementing combination interventions requiring high levels of communication and coordination among multiple partners
- Building and sustaining long-term relationships and communication with stakeholders enables researchers to design rigorous studies responsive to local needs
- The engagement process was guided by the Practical, Robust Implementation and Sustainability (PRISM) conceptual framework
- The research targeted children and adolescents impacted by HIV/AIDS, including those who lost parents to the virus or were perinatally infected
Limitations
This paper describes stakeholder engagement strategies and implementation approaches rather than evaluating the outcomes of the intervention itself. The document does not provide quantitative results on health or mental health improvements for the children and adolescents involved.
Abstract
The African region remains the world's most affected region in the HIV epidemic. A related consequence of HIV/AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), including in Uganda, is the high prevalence of children and adolescents who have lost one or both parents to this virus or who have been perinatally infected. Guided by the Practical, Robust Implementation and Sustainability (PRISM) framework, this paper describes the strategies by which we have engaged community and government partners in research using three NIH-funded randomized clinical trials testing an evidence-based combination intervention aimed at improving health and mental health outcomes among children and adolescents impacted by HIV/AIDS in Uganda. We specifically lay out four strategies that have been used to facilitate stakeholder engagement, namely consultative meetings, stakeholder accountability meetings, training of key players (task-shifting), and policymaker engagement. We emphasize that community collaborations and partnerships are especially critical when implementing combination interventions that require a high level of communication and coordination among multiple implementation partners. We underline that building and sustaining long-term relationships and communication with the stakeholders can allow the researchers to successfully design rigorous studies that are responsive to local needs and can make a difference especially in low-resource settings. Finally, we highlight that the process of engagement and collaboration can be guided by conceptual frameworks.