Posted by Lucile Scott, April 29, 2015
For the third consecutive year, the GMT Initiative has teamed up with the Center for LGBT Health Research at the University of Pittsburgh’s Graduate School of Public Health to offer scholarships to four researchers from low- or middle-income countries as part of the amfAR HIV Scholars program. The program aims to strengthen responses to HIV by offering leading GMT community-based researchers five months of graduate-level study on LGBT health research, study design, and grant writing.
“The strategies that work best for addressing HIV are those developed by community-based scholars and activists, and they have to have solid research skills and data or their brilliant strategies won’t get funding,” says Dr. Ron Stall, chair of the Department of Behavioral and Community Health Sciences at Pitt Public Health, who oversees the program. “The scholars are local heroes often doing this work at great risk to themselves, and we invest in them to help them get their programs off the ground.”
By the end of their stay, the scholars will have not only sharpened their research skills, but also drafted a proposal to investigate culturally appropriate strategies for improving HIV services for GMT individuals in their countries. Earlier this month, they travelled to New York City to present their proposals to amfAR’s staff for possible funding. Watch them discuss their work and the HIV Scholars program in the video above.
The 2015 amfAR HIV Scholars (left to right): Sheryar Kazi associated with the Naz Male Health Alliance, Pakistan; Liesl Theron, a consultant supported by Gender DynamiX, South Africa; Erika Castellanos from the Collaborative Network of Persons Living with HIV (C-NET+), Belize; and Weibin Cheng from the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention and GZTZ.org.