The Africa Centre and the University of Southampton Research Partnership on Demographic Change and Health (360G-Wellcome-082384_B_07_C)

The Africa Centre for Health and Population Studies aims to generate policy relevant knowledge of the highest quality, to inform the development and evaluation of interventions and contribute to improvement in health status of populations affected by the HIV epidemic. Making full use of the special features characterising the Africa Centre, the over-arching research priorities are to rapidly inform the development of interventions aimed to reduce the incidence of HIV, and to improve the HIV-related service provision through increased understanding of the effect and impact of the HIV epidemic at an individual and population level. This includes quantifying the effect of the increasing availability of antiretroviral therapy in the area on incidence of new HIV infections and dynamics at a population and an individual level, not only on fertility and mortality, but also on migration and sexual behaviour. Linking the demographic surveillance with the clinical HIV/ARV cohort at an individual level is vital to achieve this, while the AC surveillance platform provides the tool for intervention identification and evaluation. Ultimately, this research will result in development and evaluation of interventions, which will aim to keep HIV negative people negative, healthy people healthy and HIV infected people optimally cared for.