{"id":49499,"date":"2011-12-01T08:20:27","date_gmt":"2011-12-01T13:20:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=49499"},"modified":"2011-12-05T14:34:17","modified_gmt":"2011-12-05T19:34:17","slug":"mapping-hiv-prevention-efforts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2011\/12\/mapping-hiv-prevention-efforts\/","title":{"rendered":"Mapping HIV Prevention Efforts"},"content":{"rendered":"

 <\/p>\n

\"Psychology<\/a>
Psychology professor Blair Johnson, a principal investigator with CHIP, is using GIS to analyze factors affecting the efficacy of HIV prevention interventions. (Max Sinton for UConn)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

CHIP principal investigator Blair T. Johnson has undertaken federally-funded HIV prevention research for the past 16 years, but his latest work in the field required the social psychology professor in UConn\u2019s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences to master a new discipline \u2013 geospatial analysis.<\/p>\n

For the past year, since the National Institute of Mental Health awarded him a K-18 mentored career development grant, Johnson has immersed himself in the study of Geographical Information Systems (GIS) \u2013 reading the field\u2019s leading journals and monitoring GIS listservs, auditing UConn courses in geographical statistics, and meeting regularly with his mentor on the grant, Ellen Cromley, a former geography professor at UConn and author of GIS and Public Health<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

Johnson is fusing his new training with his internationally-known expertise in meta-analysis to determine how geospatial factors, such as environment, culture, and politics, can affect the efficacy of HIV prevention interventions. His ultimate goal is to assemble a geospatial landscape of HIV prevention interventions and publish an interactive map on the Internet so that it can become a resource for researchers, public health workers, and policy makers around the world.<\/p>\n

His \u201cSyntheses of HIV & AIDS Research Project (SHARP)<\/a>\u201d research team has begun building such a map for HIV prevention efforts in Africa, and next plans to create a similar map for the U.S.<\/p>\n

\u201cHIV requires thinking about society,\u201d Johnson says. \u201cUnless you think about relationships with others, the networks individuals are involved in, willing and unwillingly, you can\u2019t put the epidemic in perspective.<\/p>\n

\u201cStructural level descriptions \u2013 at the level of neighborhoods as well as countries \u2013 help predict the success of interventions,\u201d he adds.<\/p>\n

Johnson says his work \u201cwill elucidate what strategies are best equipped to create the best interventions for some of the hardest hit regions of the world.<\/p>\n

\u201cBy creating a map where prevention efforts were studied, policy makers will be able to see what studies have been done, how old they are, and if they can still trust the results,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Last fall, SHARP published an article<\/a> based on its preliminary work incorporating geospatially defined social indicators into a meta-analysis of HIV prevention interventions in Latin America and the Caribbean. The team found that in this region the Human Development Index \u2013 the United Nations\u2019 index of development based on life expectancy, education, and a country\u2019s gross domestic product \u2013 is inversely related to HIV trial outcomes. In other words, HIV prevention interventions yield very few results in wealthier nations, while in poorer countries the interventions produce better results. They have found similar results for HIV prevention trials in Africa and Asia, as well.<\/p>\n

Their results also suggest that HIV prevention interventions designed for African women yield marked short-term success, but the power dynamics at play between men and women in Africa threaten the long-term success of such interventions.<\/p>\n

Johnson said his initial papers published using geospatial strategies have been a start, but the training he has undergone through his one-year grant is now allowing him to conduct similar analyses with greater detail and sophistication.<\/p>\n

This latest work builds on the SHARP team\u2019s recent line of research using meta-analytic methods to develop a theory of HIV prevention based on individuals\u2019 linkages to important networks and the resources they share.<\/p>\n

The work of Johnson\u2019s SHARP team has been made possible through three, consecutive, NIMH regular research grants. SHARP is among NIMH\u2019s longest-running HIV prevention grants.<\/p>\n

Dec. 1 is World AIDS Day.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A UConn researcher is using GIS to analyze how environment, culture, and politics can affect the efficacy of HIV prevention interventions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":51212,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2076,1],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[43],"class_list":["post-49499","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-research","category-uncategorized"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-13 03:24:59","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49499","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49499"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49499\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51469,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49499\/revisions\/51469"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/51212"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49499"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49499"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49499"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=49499"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=49499"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}