Wits-UNC Partnership: Expanding Capacity in HIV Implementation Science in South Africa

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Contact PD/PI: Pettifor, Audrey PrPorjoejcetcSt uSmummmarayry South Africa continues to be at the center of the HIV epidemic with the most persons living with HIV globally. While access to HIV prevention and antiretroviral therapy (ART) has expanded in recent years, there are still significant gaps in the proportion of people accessing prevention and care programs. To successfully reach the UNAIDS goal of epidemic control, access and adherence to effective prevention and treatment programs must be significantly expanded. Implementation science can help in understanding how to improve access to, uptake of and quality of programs needed to curtail the epidemic. By increasing the number of implementation science experts and organizations, our proposal can effect change. In the current D43 award (2014-2019), the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC-CH) and the School of Public Health (SPH) at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) in South Africa successfully developed and implemented the first Masters and Doctoral program in Implementation Science (IS) in South Africa and the Africa region and built research capacity among South African faculty, students and government. Wits and UNC faculty worked closely together to develop new courses in IS, set up the degree program and taught 11 courses together. With this strong academic foundation in place, in this renewal, we seek to strengthen the degree program developed, for Wits to take full ownership of the program and to expand our training and mentoring model by partnering with three leading South African HIV research organizations affiliated with Wits (Wits Reproductive Health and HIV Institute (RHI), Anova Health Institute, and Aurum Institute) to build a critical mass of IS expertise based on identified need within their organizations. In this project we aim: 1) To establish Wits SPH as a center of excellence in implementation science training and to support Wits SPH to independently lead the IS degree program into the future. 2) To support Wits faculty, and those affiliated with Wits at our 3 HIV research partners and UCT, in career development and progression to becoming independent researchers with expertise in both IS and HIV. 3) To develop expertise in implementation science among 3 leading South African HIV research organizations: Wits RHI, Anova and Aurum. This renewal will solidify a successful program in IS that Wits and UNC jointly implemented in the current D43. We will leverage our experience and strong collaborative history between UNC and Wits to establish Wits as a leader in IS training and to expand the groundwork laid in our current D43 by joining forces with leading HIV Research Institutions—Wits RHI, Anova and Aurum. In this renewal we aim to expand the cadre of IS researchers who can conduct rigorous and innovative IS research to improve the uptake and delivery of prevention and care programs, ultimately preventing new HIV infections and deaths.