Patrick Muchai

Patrick has been involved in HIV prevention programs in Kenya for the past fifteen years and is passionate about working with communities to understand their sexual and reproductive health and rights. Patrick has served as the Chairperson of the Kenya Medical Research Institute-University of Washington Community Advisory Board (CAB) in Coast Province and coordinated the Coast Vaccine Support Network in Kenya, which enabled him to link research institutions to the community by repackaging information on HIV vaccines in an accessible language.

Fellowship Focus
Patrick developed a culturally-appropriate HIV prevention research training curriculum regarding participation in clinical trials of microbicides, PrEP and HIV vaccines for community members, with a specific focus on key populations in Kenya such as MSM and sex workers. He also built the capacity of Community Advisory Board members to work with the media to ensure that their perspectives are accurately represented.

In Their Own Words
When research communities are meaningfully engaged, they are empowered to participate and provide feedback to the research teams and, in the process, it creates an enabling environment for research conduct.

Definate Nhamo

Definate is currently working on dapivirine ring planning and introduction under the PROMISE consortium, funded by USAID. She has also been a lead on projects to roll out PrEP in Zimbabwe. Previously, through her work on the Shaping the Health of Adolescents in Zimbabwe (SHAZ!) Project, Definate developed extensive experience working with orphaned and vulnerable adolescent girls and young women living on the streets. She won the Young Women Investigator’s prize at the 2013 International AIDS Society Conference in Malaysia for her abstract on adolescents and gender-based violence.

Fellowship Focus
Definate advocated for comprehensive HIV prevention options for young women and for their integration into sexual and reproductive health programs in Zimbabwe. She documented the perspectives of young women that she used to inform the consolidated national guidelines. She also worked with researchers and civil society members to prepare for microbicide trial results and accelerate regulatory considerations once results were released, as well as to influence the rollout of PrEP in Zimbabwe.

Definate’s Media Advocacy

Everlyne Ombati

Everlyn is the program coordinator for CBEC-KEMRI Bioethics Training Initiative (CKBTI), an NIH FIC funded bioethics training program established to create bioethics capacity in Kenya. She has extensive experience with biomedical research and regulatory issues through her work with the Kenya Medical Research Institute (KEMRI) and has been involved in coordinating the process of reviewing and restructuring of the research regulatory system within KEMRI.

Fellowship Focus
Everlyn focused on advocacy for options designed to meet women’s multiple and diverse needs. She worked closely with Fellow Teresia Njoki to ensure that new HIV prevention options for women are part of the conversation in discussing Kenya’s future planning for prevention at the national and county levels. She built awareness around and prepared the ground for rollout of multipurpose prevention technologies (MPTs). Once developed, these options will prevent unintended pregnancies and sexually transmitted infections, including HIV. She engaged three distinct levels of participants: community/end users, the research community/medical fraternity and regulators. Her project captured perceptions, knowledge and interest around MPTs in order to determine whether MPTs are a recognized need, explored what kind of products would be acceptable in Kenya and promoted awareness of MPTs. She also engaged regulators to discuss the ethical development of MPTs and the regulatory challenges faced in their introduction.

In Their Own Words
It is challenging to advocate for products like MPTs that aren’t available yet, so it’s important to be careful with the language we use to manage communities’ expectations. Also, these products must be introduced in a way that complements already existing products rather than one that alienates or stigmatizes them.

Everlyne’s Media Advocacy

• New Pregnancy HIV Prevention Tools On The Way
• Kenya: Deliver HIV Prevention Tools to Young Women

Materials
Poster – Raising awareness for microbicides and multipurpose prevention technologies in Kenya

Teresia Njoki Otieno

Teresia currently works for the Center for Multicultural Health, a community-based organization in Seattle, where she provides direct services to African-Americans and African immigrants and refugees. She’s a member of the ATHENA Network, the Ryan White Planning Council and the US People Living with HIV Caucus steering committee. She is an accomplished advocate for HIV-positive women, with experience in counseling, testing and community engagement. She is living with HIV and in a discordant relationship. She has fought for the sexual and reproductive rights of women in Kenya and in international forums, and has worked with other women living with HIV to fight their forced and coerced sterilization.

Fellowship Focus
Teresia worked with discordant couples and sex workers to shape the PrEP agenda in Kenya by increasing their participation in HIV prevention forums and committees at the county and national levels. She worked closely with Fellow Everlyne Ombati to ensure that new HIV prevention options for women, including PrEP, are part of the conversation in discussing Kenya’s future planning for prevention. She documented perceptions of PrEP in the target communities and her advocacy informed the inclusion of PrEP in the Kenya National Strategic Plan. She also engaged in national and international discussions and influenced research to better understand the possible connection between hormonal contraceptive use and HIV risk. She has been directly involved in conversations before, during and after the ECHO trial.

In Their Own Words
We’ve seen major breakthroughs in HIV prevention, treatment and even cure research over the last several years. Science continues to deliver – now it’s time for us as advocates, service providers, governments and funders to effectively implement what’s been delivered to us as we work towards new possibilities for tomorrow.

Yvette Raphael

Yvette is a co-founder and co-director of Advocacy for Prevention of HIV and AIDS (APHA) in South Africa. She is a human rights activist with a focus on people living with HIV (PLHIV), young women and lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer and intersex (LGBTQI) communities. She became involved in HIV/AIDS advocacy after she was diagnosed with HIV in 2000. Since then, she has worked in HIV/AIDS education in the safety and security sector and founded two empowerment and support organizations for PLHIV. She has worked on award winning programs, including Brothers for Life, Scrutinize, Four Play, Intersexions and ZAZI.

Fellowship Focus
Yvette helped to empower young women in South Africa to demand HIV prevention interventions designed for them. She worked with the ZAZI training program to incorporate information about new prevention technologies and to mentor young prevention advocates. She also worked with the media to overcome “HIV fatigue” and promote accurate messages about prevention.

In Their Own Words
You’ll hear a lot of people say Depo is Africa’s most popular family planning method. But that’s not actually true. ‘Popular’ implies people choose Depo over other contraceptive options because they like it more… While DMPA is the most widely used long-acting method in many countries, including South Africa, the reality is that women are, every day, dependent on clinics where it is the only contraceptive choice on offer.

Media

Materials

Carolyn Njoroge

Carolyn is a sex worker, rights activist and is living positively as an accomplished advocate for health issues including comprehensive HIV prevention treatment, care and services in Kenya. Her current advocacy focuses on capacity building and community and economic empowerment with sex worker-led organizations in Kenya. She’s been involved in microbicides and PrEP research endeavors among sex workers, and through these experiences, has built a community profile and a strong network among fellow sex workers and allied organizations.

Fellowship Focus
Carolyn advocated for research on microbicides and the rollout of PrEP among key populations, particularly sex workers in Kenya. She ensured that sex workers have access to information on PrEP to empower them to make decisions. She also engaged with researchers, policy makers and funders to bring sex workers’ voices to the forefront of PrEP programming. She advocated for change in laws that criminalise sex work in Kenya since they increase sex workers’ vulnerability to new HIV infections. Carolyn continued her advocacy after her Fellowship and is a strong voice for HIV prevention and the rights of key populations in Kenya and the region.

In Their Own Words
Laws that criminalize sex work in Kenya and all over the world make sex workers vulnerable to new HIV infections. PrEP and microbicides could help empower them to protect themselves from HIV in these climates of hardship.

Carolyn’s Media Advocacy

Memory Makamba

Memory worked to bring serodiscordant couples into HIV prevention programs. To do this, she convinced civil society, policy makers and program implementers of their need. She also engaged PEPFAR in discussions around the need to increase funding for treatment and prevention scale-up, resulting in an additional $39 million for PMTCT, VMMC and treatment.

Fellowship Focus
Memory worked to bring serodiscordant couples into HIV prevention programs. To do this, she convinced civil society, policy makers and program implementers of their need. She also engaged PEPFAR in discussions around the need to increase funding for treatment and prevention scale-up, resulting in an additional $39 million for PMTCT, VMMC and treatment.

In Their Own Words
Although Zimbabwe is one of the HPTN 052 study sites, very few people outside the HIV prevention research are aware of the groundbreaking results that were released in 2011.

Lydia Mulwanyi-Mukombe

Lydia currently works at UNFPA as a Senior Policy Advisor in the Uganda office. She has a wealth of experience in community health-related program planning and implementation, participatory monitoring and evaluation. At the time of her project, she had more than seven years’ experience working in non-governmental organizations and in partnership with regional and international agencies focused on adolescent sexual reproductive health, health rights awareness and advocacy and community engagement in health and research. Her advocacy experiences have been directed toward universal access to HIV treatment, increased funding for reproductive health supplies and the promotion and protection of the right to health in Uganda.

Fellowship Focus
Lydia documented an understanding of what prevention trial results mean for women—from tenofovir gel to hormonal contraceptive impact on HIV risk—and used that evidence to influence research and policy in Uganda and beyond. One of Lydia’s accomplishments was convening key consultative meetings of women from across Africa to deliberate on the issue of hormonal contraception and HIV risk. These convenings influenced the decision to conduct the ECHO trial and also influenced the conduct of the trial and post-trial decisions related to increasing method mix of HIV prevention, treatment and contraception for women.

In Their Own Words
The ECHO trial results were critical, for they pointed to the need for governments to provide contraceptive method mix for women, promote informed choice of contraceptive options and strengthen integration of contraceptive and HIV prevention services.

Grace Kamau

Grace is currently the Regional Coordinator of the Africa Sex Workers Alliance (ASWA). Before her Fellowship project, she was involved in HIV prevention programs with the Bar Hostess Empowerment and Support Programme (BHSP), which supports a membership of more than forty thousand sex workers, and where she worked as project officer coordinating sex workers across Kenya. She was the Secretary of the Sex Worker Alliance for Kenya and sits on the Kenya Technical Advisory body for sex workers.

Fellowship Focus
Grace engaged sex workers and bar hostesses to better facilitate acceptance and engagement with PrEP and microbicides research. She explored the issues and concerns about possible future access to these interventions for sex workers and bar hostesses. As Fellow, she engaged policy makers on the benefits that these potential HIV prevention interventions could have for high-risk groups.

In Their Own Words
Sex workers are an easy target in a time of crisis. Clients feel they can take advantage of them, and law enforcement think they can use them to show that they are implementing COVID-19 measures.

Media

Oliver Kanene

Oliver is the Executive Director at Business for Social Change (BfSC), Zambia. He came to the Fellows program with a wealth of experience as a journalist and development worker with experience in HIV prevention activities. Since 1986, he has used his extensive experience in media and communications to work towards confronting the stigma around HIV/AIDS on many fronts. With support from local and international organizations, he started a newspaper, AIDS & Health News. He has worked with several local, regional and international organisations, including the Zambia Institute of Mass Communications (ZAMCOM) and John Snow Training Institute and Concern Worldwide, among others. Oliver holds a Bachelor of Social Sciences degree from the University of Tampere in Finland.

Fellowship Focus
Oliver used his extensive media and HIV/AIDS experience to build a cadre of journalists who consistently, accurately and responsibly report on HIV prevention research in Zambia. He also worked toward creating linkages between researchers, civil society and media, thereby contributing to a favorable HIV prevention research environment. He used the MDP 301 trial process as a case study.

In Their Own Words
Science is worthless if it is not shared with people, but sharing can only happen if the media first understand the processes involved.