Women's Empowerment and Sexual Risk in Zambia

描述(由申请人提供)：拟议的博士前研究金项目将审查妇女相对赋权的关系及其对妇女感染艾滋病毒/性传播疾病风险的影响。妇女赋权干预已成为妇女减少性风险的主要途径之一，但其在减少性风险方面的影响的经验证据有限。一种批评是，赋权计划关注的是女性作为个体，而不是考虑她们的男性、家庭和社区关系。这项拟议的研究试图测试一个被广泛接受的命题，即注重赋权的干预措施在降低赞比亚妇女的性风险方面是有效的。它还试图确定与妇女的主要男性伴侣的关系的性质，作为赋权和性风险的一个因素。赞比亚正在经历成熟的艾滋病毒/艾滋病疫情对健康、经济和社会的影响，15至49岁的人艾滋病毒流行率为14.3%。疫情影响到社会和经济增长的方方面面，摧毁了个别家庭，削弱了公共部门的所有领域，并威胁到国家的长期发展。因此，迫切需要将性风险降至最低，并遏制该流行病的传播。该项目的具体目标是：制定妇女赋权的当地定义，记录坎亚马镇(赞比亚卢萨卡)居民可获得的赋权方案，确定妇女与男性主要关系的变化范围，确定干预方案的暴露程度及其对赋权和性风险的影响，评估妇女伴侣关系的性质及其与赋权和性风险的关系，并进行多变量分析，确定独立变量和中介变量在预测女性性风险方面的相对强度。该项目将采用定性(主要信息提供人和深入访谈)和定量(调查工具)两种方法。该项目旨在提供申请人在获得博士学位后扩大研究经费所需的形成研究成果；促进现有的关于赋权在减少性风险方面的作用的研究；并产生能够对赞比亚妇女的健康和福祉产生积极影响的数据。 公共卫生相关性：拟议的博士前研究金项目将审查妇女相对赋权的关系及其对妇女感染艾滋病毒/性传播疾病风险的影响。它还试图确定与妇女的主要男性伴侣的关系的性质，作为赋权和性风险的一个因素。通过评估这两个因素对妇女性健康结果的影响，将为设计与文化相关的干预措施提供洞察力，从而有效降低妇女的性风险。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The proposed pre-doctoral fellowship project will examine the relationship of women's relative empowerment and its impact on women's risk of HIV/STD. Empowerment interventions with women have become one of the major approaches to women's sexual risk reduction, yet the empirical evidence of its impact in reducing sexual risk is limited. One critique is that empowerment programs are focused on women as individuals rather than taking into account their male, familial and community relationships. This proposed research seeks to test the widely accepted proposition that interventions that focus on empowerment are effective in reducing Zambian women's sexual risk. It also seeks to identify the nature of the relationship with women's primary male partner as a factor in both empowerment and sexual risk. Zambia is experiencing the health, economic, and social impacts of a mature HIV/AIDS epidemic, with a HIV prevalence of 14.3% for individuals between the ages of 15 and 49. The epidemic has affected all aspects of the social and economic growth and has devastated individual families, weakened all areas of the public sector, and threatened the long-term national development. Hence the need to minimize sexual risk and curb the spread of the epidemic is pressing. The specific aims of this project are to: develop a local definition of women's empowerment, document the empowerment programs available to residents in the Kanyama township (Lusaka, Zambia), identify the range of variation in women's primary relationships with men, identify the level of exposure to intervention programs and its impact on both empowerment and sexual risk, assess the nature of women's partner relationship and its relationship to empowerment and sexual risk and conduct a multivariate analysis that identifies the relative strength of independent and mediating variables in predicting women's sexual risk. The project will employ both qualitative (key informant and in-depth interviewing) and quantitative (survey instrument) methods. This project is intended to provide the formative research results needed for the development of an expanded research grant by the applicant after her PhD is awarded; to contribute to available research on the role of empowerment in sexual risk reduction; and to generate data that can positively impact on the health and well being of women in Zambia. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: The proposed pre-doctoral fellowship project will examine the relationship of women's relative empowerment and its impact on women's risk of HIV/STD. It also seeks to identify the nature of the relationship with women's primary male partner as a factor in both empowerment and sexual risk. By evaluating the effects of these two factors on women's sexual health outcomes, insight will be provided towards the design of culturally relevant interventions that will effectively reduce women's sexual risk.