Friends in deed – preventing HIV through peer education in South African schools

HIV is rampant among young people in South Africa, despite sound knowledge about sexual health risks. Levels of perceived vulnerability among this group are low and unprotected sex is common. Researchers from the London School of Economics studied a participatory programme seeking to empower young people to change gender norms as an HIV prevention strategy.

In peer education programmes, members of target groups provide health-related information and condoms to their peers. The researchers argue that an important goal of peer education is to enable young people to develop critical consciousness about their sexual health.

Summertown is a township near Johannesburg with a population of 150 000. It has high rates of crime, violence and unemployment, and disappointing rates of school completion. Twenty young people volunteered to be peer educators – 10 men and 10 women. They were trained in participatory HIV prevention methods and supplied with free condoms for distribution. The researchers held eight monthly focus group discussions with them. Interviews focused on three aspects of social capital: civic participation, perceived trust and helpfulness, and a positive local identity.

The research revealed factors that may inhibit the development of critical awareness of sexual health issues in this setting, including:

• the highly regulated nature of the school environment
• teacher control of the programme
• ingrained preferences for educational methods
• biomedical rather than social content of discussions – due to a lack of explicit training in critical thinking skills and social explanations of HIV transmission
• gender dynamics among peer educators
• negative attitudes towards the programme.

Other factors likely to undermine the success of the programme include:

• limited opportunities for communication about sex
• poor adult role models of sexual relationships
• community and wider social environments.

The researchers recommend a combination of strategies in the fight against HIV in South Africa over the long term (e.g. macro-economic development), medium term (e.g. changing norms of sexual behaviour) and short term (e.g. aggressive detection and treatment of sexually transmitted infections).

Other strategies include:

• developing educational policies that encourage the development of young people’s autonomy and the capacity for critical thinking
• cultivating school contexts that enable young people to exercise real leadership of HIV-prevention programmes and real ownership of the problem of rocketing HIV levels amongst youth
• integrating in-school prevention programmes with social development activities seeking to promote young people’s social capital
• increasing opportunities for young people to become involved in local community organisations and in community decision making
• raising parental awareness about the importance of open and frank communication about sex
• enabling HIV prevention workers, peer educator trainers, peer educators and their target audiences to understand the philosophy of peer education.

Source(s):
‘Peer education, gender and the development of critical consciousness: participatory HIV prevention by South African youth’, Social Science and Medicine 55: 331- 345, by C. Campbell and C. MacPhail, 2002.
HINARI subscribers can access the full-text article here. Full document.

Funded by: UK Department for International Development; UNAIDS

id21 Research Highlight: 5 February 2003

Further Information:
Catherine Campbell
Department of Social Psychology
London School of Economics and Political Science
Houghton Street
London WC2A 2AE
UK

Tel: +44 (0)20 7955 7701
Fax: +44 (0)20 7955 7565
Contact the contributor: c.campbell@lse.ac.uk

London School of Economics, UK

Other related links:
See id21's collection of links relevant to HIV/AIDS.