[Micky Hingorani]

Thank you Anne, useful info.

[Micky Hingorani]

In preparation HPTN 073 the HPTN consulted with the BGRG and the Black Caucus. The Black Gay Research Group (BGRG) is a diverse group of Black gay researchers committed to creating a platform for presenting, discussing, and analyzing scholarly work being produced by and on Black gay men.  The Black Caucus is a highly knowledgeable interdisciplinary group of dedicated professionals for expert consultation with unique expertise in conducting research on, about, and related to the lives of Black MSM at increased risk for HIV infection. The group provides HPTN protocol teams with technical assistance and oversees community engagement practices for HPTN 073 specifically.

If a version protocol were to reach a site without community stakeholder engagement  I would suggest their input should be incorporated immediately. Although the consultation may not affect the study design at that point it could influence study implementation.

[Micky Hingorani]

Social media has served as an effective way to recruitment study participants. Once enrolled into the study participants have the option of “liking” and “sharing” the facebook page associated with HPTN 073. Also other non traditional methods of recruitment and social media are phone/tablet applications such as Grindr and Jackd. Thus far I am not aware of any negative feedback via social media about HPTN 073.

[Micky Hingorani]

Thanks for this sample. It’s going to help me because I don’t always structure my6 plan well but this is going to guide to improve my planning going forward

[Micky Hingorani]

Thanks, its is really helpful

[Micky Hingorani]

I share the sentiments of the team. The course is very intense but very useful and thought provoking. I had the opportunity to discuss my questions during the GPP calls so I currently have no questions.

Thank you GPP team.

[Micky Hingorani]

CAPRISA’s approach to community engagement proved successful because they engendered themselves as part of the community. They built trust with the communities by doing non study related community work that empowered the community and made them part of the community.

At our site, we maintain relationships in the community by Imbizo (meetings) where we tackle different HIV related issues and education. We would get various stakeholders to be a part of them event. EG, we would get guys from GK sport to have some aerobics and boot camp and then educate about the importance of living healthy and looking after yourself, then go into HIV prevention and HIV prevention research.

[Micky Hingorani]

Well done to everyone who managed to complete the course, and thank you to the GPP team!  The training was very intense but useful.

[Micky Hingorani]

Thanks.

 

[Micky Hingorani]

The course broaden my mind to effective stakeholders engagement. GPP has helped in our communication design. We are able to design an issue management plan for our study.

[Micky Hingorani]

To sustain engagement with SH after HIV vaccine  trial closure,  The research team and stakeholders will discuss  the availability of HIV testing services to participants after the trial has completed considering that some of them will have VISP following vaccination and provision of education related to VISP to health care providers and general community, since VISP  has been one of issues bringing lots of concerns and misconceptions in our area, therefore it is important to continue engaging them .

As for result dissemination , a plan for result dissemination will be developed in advance with the research team and stakeholders. When the results for the trial are released the site will organise a meeting with stakeholders to develop key messages to be disseminated to the participants, other stake holders and community in general.

In post trial access, the high level health officials in the ministry of health, officials at regional as well as district level are most influential at this stage, since there will be guidelines to be developed on supply or distribution of the product. However the local government and community stake holders will have a special obligation in advocacy and ensuring accessibility  to the trial participants and the trial community in general.

[Micky Hingorani]

The GPP course has helped me a lot with understanding GPP. How do you enforce the rest of the staff, especially your seniors to follwo GPP. I feel that it is mostly the community team  who follows GPP practises and it should be everyone. how do we educate the rest of our teams about the GPP principles.

 

Engaging with youth is not always easy, best thing to start with is to ensure that the staff themselves understand what Youth friendly mean. If you mistreat a young person from the first encounter, they might not come back to site.  Denver, we are currenlty recruiting for a PrEP study in adolescents and believe me we have to sell PrEP to these adolescents because in our communities they do not always have access to information or internet so we have to work harder to do education. We have youth programs taking place and when the youth come either for Drama classes a dance classes then we talk about the research. We also incentive programs for youth where they earn point for all the activities they do at our site and the can use their points to biy either a meal or to print and make copies. They do not have access to computers at home and our site and the libratry are the only places they can use to access comouters. It is not easy but we rty different methods to ensure we continously engage with the youth

[Micky Hingorani]

The CAPRISA Team had great stratergies that helped with the implementation of their research. Their stakeholder engagement activities were on point and were developed. It is important to engage with the community in other aids and not only when you as the site need the community for your research in orderr to build relationships. Recently in our community there was a lot of protests and unrest, matriculants had to be accomodated elsewhere so that their studies would not be interrupted. As the staff in our site we  collected donations amongst our organisation to help with food and toiletries for the students. This was outside our mandate but when working with community you must engage with them in all aspect and needs in order to build trust and strengthen the relationship.

[Micky Hingorani]

At the stage of planing the team identified the target population and paid advocate to major stakeholder’s holders. CAB was consisted based on mapping of stakeholders. There were series of presentations done.

[Micky Hingorani]

We did not make use of the social media strategies in our current study because we were focusing on one on one interaction. The sensitive of the study  required that were use the one on one strategy.