| Abstract |
With plans for a massive scaling-up of antiretroviral therapy (ART) recently announced by the Nigerian government, and supported by the U.S. President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), the role of religious organizations in Nigeria's HIV/AIDS epidemic will expand from setting moral standards that shape sexual behavior and affect attitudes toward people living with HIV to direct involvement in the provision, monitoring, and long-term success of antiretroviral therapy. In southeastern Nigeria nearly all citizens are Christians, and the fastest growing churches are Pentecostal and other evangelical denominations. This pilot study aims to examine the extent and nature of Pentecostal churches' and affiliated associations' participation in HIV-related activities, the factors that influence such involvement, and its effectiveness. The results of this preliminary research will be used to develop a proposal to NIH for a larger, longer-term study focusing on the impact of religious organizations in the treatment and care and support of people living with HIV in Nigeria.
The specific aims of this pilot study are: 1) Examine and assess the influence of Nigeria's rapidly growing Pentecostal and evangelical churches in supporting or inhibiting the treatment of people living with HIV/AIDS. 2) Identify representative cases of Pentecostal and other church-related organizations' emergent involvement in the expanded provision of antiretroviral therapy in Nigeria, developing a taxonomy that maps the main strategies, sketches the principal demographic patterns of participation, and documents the key obstacles to adherence. 3) Utilize the data produced and the collaborative relationships created in the pilot study to develop a longer-term full-fledged proposal to NIH responding to a Program Announcement on Religious Organizations and HIV/AIDS.
As a disease, HIV/AIDS has continuously reminded public health practitioners that the complexities of quotidian social life are implicated in prevention and treatment. In preparation for a larger study, the ethnographic methods of participant observation and semi-structured interviewing are designed to chart the social landscape of religion institutions involved in ART, identify and establish working relationships with the public health programs and personnel supporting these programs, and better understand the motives and constraints that shape ordinary people's HIV/AIDS-related behavior, especially with regard to ART.
The project builds on the investigator's previous medical anthropological research on HIV/AIDS in Nigeria, which focused primarily on the social dimensions of risk among adolescents and young adults, and more recently on married women whose husbands are engaged in extramarital sexual relationships. This pilot study takes the researcher in new directions, addressing the importance of religious organizations in responding to Nigeria's HIV/AIDS epidemic, an issue that has become all the more important in the context of Nigeria's huge scale-up of ART programs.
|
