HIVAN’s primary purpose is to promote, conduct, and build capacity for research that is responsive to and contributes to alleviating the circumstances of people living with and affected by HIV/AIDS.

HIVAN’s priority is to address the epidemic in KwaZulu-Natal, but activities elsewhere are not excluded. It aims to:

• Facilitate and conduct applied research in partnership with communities, civil society organisations and public health-care facilities;
• Connect researchers and practitioners in KwaZulu-Natal with counterparts elsewhere in South Africa, Africa and abroad;
• Train and mentor a new generation of biomedical, social and behavioural scientists;
• Build capacity among practitioners in the public and civil society sectors to engage in applied research;
• Initiate, conduct, and critically assess grassroots-level HIV/AIDS intervention programmes in partnership with local communities;
• Provide evaluation services that are based on qualitative styles of research and that properly interrogate the humanistic dimensions of HIV/AIDS prevention, treatment and care programmes;
• Promote dialogue, better understanding and collaboration between researchers and practitioners; and
• Disseminate practical information about the pandemic across the various sectors of society.

African Models and Lessons

Insofar as the HIV epidemic is in more advanced phases in other African regions, it is critical that mistakes made there are not repeated in South Africa in the future, and that information about programmes that are successful elsewhere in Africa is fed into nascent HIV/AIDS-related initiatives here. This research programme will compile an evaluated resource base of HIV/AIDS-related research, training, and intervention initiatives, primarily from elsewhere in Africa but also, where relevant, from other parts of the world, and it will monitor the progress of these initiatives on an ongoing basis. Not only will the outcomes of this research bolster HIVAN's online data-base, but the programme will also produce a quarterly updating brief that will be mailed electronically to all of the stakeholders registered with the HIVAN database.

For more information:

Click here to find out more about HIVAN on the organisation's website.

Click here to see the list of research available and current projects and focus areas on the the organisation's website.