Author Archives: abena

loveLife: South Africa’s National Youth HIV Prevention Initiative

March 8, 2012 in Repro Health/HIV and tagged by abena
For my last blog post, I am going to write about another promising HIV intervention targeted at youth, “loveLIfe.”  Before I discuss that effort, I wanted to briefly mention the talk on TeachAIDS in class yesterday.  I really enjoyed learning the details about the program which I had previously only heard about in passing.  I [...]

Post The Location Where You “Do It”. New Condom Website.

March 1, 2012 in Repro Health/HIV and tagged by abena
Earlier this week, one of my friends sent me an article titled, “Used-condom interactive map: TMI?”  We both went to South Africa and took the class in which I researched teenage pregnancies (although she researched on a different topic.  The article is really interesting and is about Planned Parenthood’s new initiative to increase condom use.  [...]

Stepping Stones: A promising HIV Intervention

February 23, 2012 in Repro Health/HIV and tagged by abena
This week, I am taking a look at the intervention, Stepping Stones.  Stepping Stones is known for being a successful intervention that focuses on issues of HIV and gender issues (3).  Stepping Stones, was created in Uganda in 1995 (1).  The membership has now spread to over 900 members throughout Latin America, Africa, the Caribbean, [...]

Criteria for effective HIV interventions in South Africa

February 17, 2012 in Repro Health/HIV and tagged by abena
This week, I am going to look into some of the characteristics of effective intervention programs for addressing the HIV disaster in South Africa.  As has been discussed before, the issue is extremely complex, and thus very difficult to fix.  There are numerous challenges that first have to be addressed when creating an intervention.  One [...]

What is preventing proper HIV education?

February 9, 2012 in Repro Health/HIV and tagged by abena
As I began researching information for this week’s blog, I again found very troubling statistics about HIV in South African teens.  One study showed that, although the total rate of HIV infection in South Africa appears to be stabilizing, the numbers about the teens are not optimistic.  Unfortunately, the numbers among teens were not falling [...]

Women in HIV Organizations

February 2, 2012 in Repro Health/HIV and tagged by abena
This week, I have decided to look up information about some of the leading HIV relief programs in South Africa.  I am interested in learning about the populations they serve and if the strategies they use.  For this post, I will focus on the organization Treatment Action Campaign (TAC). The Treatment Action Campaign was one [...]

The Profile of HIV

January 26, 2012 in Repro Health/HIV and tagged by abena
One major question I have on the topic of adolescents and HIV deals with the knowledge that adolescents have of HIV, and sexual health in general.  In South Africa, 40% of the population is made up of youth younger than 15.  Of those ages 15-24, 15.64% have HIV (1).  This means that there is a [...]

Introduction to Adolescents and HIV in Underserved Countries

January 19, 2012 in Repro Health/HIV and tagged by abena
Introduction to Adolescents and HIV in Underserved Countries   I’ll be focusing my blog, this quarter, on Adolescents and HIV in Underserved Countries.  I have yet to decide whether my focus will be just on adolescents in South Africa, or if it will compare adolescents in a few different countries.  But I’m sure I will [...]