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Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
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TY - JOUR
T1 - The impact of community mobilisation on HIV prevention in middle and low income countries
T2 - a systematic review and critique
AU - Cornish, Flora
AU - Priego-Hernandez, Jacqueline
AU - Campbell, Catherine
AU - Mburu, Gitau
AU - McLean, Susie
N1 - This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits any use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and the source are credited. Copyright. The Author(s) 2014. This article is published with open access at Springerlink.com
PY - 2014/11
Y1 - 2014/11
N2 - While community mobilisation (CM) is increasingly advocated for HIV prevention, its impact on measurable outcomes has not been established. We performed a systematic review of the impact of CM within HIV prevention interventions (N = 20), on biomedical, behavioural and social outcomes. Among most at risk groups (particularly sex workers), the evidence is somewhat consistent, indicating a tendency for positive impact, with stronger results for behavioural and social outcomes than for biomedical ones. Among youth and general communities, the evidence remains inconclusive. Success appears to be enhanced by engaging groups with a strong collective identity and by simultaneously addressing the socio-political context. We suggest that the inconclusiveness of the findings reflects problems with the evidence, rather than indicating that CM is ineffective. We discuss weaknesses in the operationalization of CM, neglect of social context, and incompatibility between context-specific CM processes and the aspiration of review methodologies to provide simple, context-transcending answers.
AB - While community mobilisation (CM) is increasingly advocated for HIV prevention, its impact on measurable outcomes has not been established. We performed a systematic review of the impact of CM within HIV prevention interventions (N = 20), on biomedical, behavioural and social outcomes. Among most at risk groups (particularly sex workers), the evidence is somewhat consistent, indicating a tendency for positive impact, with stronger results for behavioural and social outcomes than for biomedical ones. Among youth and general communities, the evidence remains inconclusive. Success appears to be enhanced by engaging groups with a strong collective identity and by simultaneously addressing the socio-political context. We suggest that the inconclusiveness of the findings reflects problems with the evidence, rather than indicating that CM is ineffective. We discuss weaknesses in the operationalization of CM, neglect of social context, and incompatibility between context-specific CM processes and the aspiration of review methodologies to provide simple, context-transcending answers.
KW - community mobilization
KW - Community participation
KW - HIV prevention
KW - HIV
KW - AIDS
KW - systematic review
U2 - 10.1007/s10461-014-0748-5
DO - 10.1007/s10461-014-0748-5
M3 - Journal article
VL - 18
SP - 2110
EP - 2134
JO - AIDS and Behavior
JF - AIDS and Behavior
SN - 1090-7165
IS - 11
ER -