Project Title

Strengthening community engagement in TB and HIV vaccine trials in South Africa (CETH)

EDCTP Project Call

Career Development Fellowship (CDF)

Project Objectives

The objectives of the "Strengthening community engagement in TB and HIV vaccine trials in South Africa" (CETH) project are: 1. To identify current barriers and facilitators of community engagement in infectious disease clinical trials in sub-Saharan Africa. 2. To identify and evaluate existing strategies for engaging community stakeholders in infectious disease clinical trials in sub-Saharan Africa. 3. To explore current understandings, experiences and practices of community engagement at two vaccine trial sites (TB and HIV) in South Africa 4. To strengthen community engagement in TB and HIV vaccine trials in South Africa, by developing a contextualised, validated and accessible framework for both community and clinical trial stakeholders

Study Design

Qualitative evidence synthesis, qualitative case studies

Project Summary

Community engagement is increasingly recognised as foundational to ethically and scientifically rigorous clinical trials involving human participants especially in low- and middle-income country settings. It involves a bi-directional partnership between community and research stakeholders to inform, consult, involve, collaborate and empower each other across the different stages of beneficial research. There is currently public debate around the adequacy of community engagement in new infectious disease vaccine trials in South Africa. This again highlights long-standing critiques that community engagement is not properly embedded in research processes and it is unclear what constitutes community engagement. There is thus a need to explore the issues and identify potential strategies for strengthening community engagement in vaccine trials in South Africa. In the first year of CETH, we focussed on objective 1 and 2, and conducted a qualitative evidence synthesis (QES), telephone interviews and a survey. The QES protocol was published in August 2022. We are in the final stages of the QES, which we plan to publish in the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews. We telephonically interviewed 20 key informants from across Sub-Saharan Africa. In the second year of CETH, we continued working on objective 1 and 2, i.e. finalising the QES and writing a manuscript based on the telephone interviews. In addition, we focused on objectives 3 and 4 and used a participatory research approach, involving observations and interviews with 17 participants at the South African Tuberculosis Vaccine Initiative (SATVI) and the Desmond Tutu HIV Foundation (DTHF). As a final step, we will conduct focus group discussions with participants involved in the project to verify our current findings and co-develop a language and format accessible framework for guiding community and clinical trial stakeholders’ engagement. For more information on the project please visit the project site at https://soph.uwc.ac.za/project-item/strengthening-community-engagement-in-tb-and-hiv-vaccine-trials-in-south-africa-ceth/

Host Organisation

Current Organisation

Current Job Title

Biography