Research and Training Programs

Building on the success of a pilot program training traditional healers to initiate HIV counseling and testing, the Vanderbilt Institute for Global Health and the University of Witwatersrand have partnered to expand healer-initiated HIV testing and linkage to care in South Africa.The study team will conduct a cluster, randomized, controlled trial comparing healer-initiated HIV counseling and testing to the standard of care in rural South Africa by utilizing an existing and trusted resource — traditional healers.

Traditional healers, community-based partners with the national health system of South Africa, are exposed to patient blood an average of 1,500 times during their careers due to the practice of delivering herbal remedies via herbs rubbed into dozens of sub-cutaneous cuts. The purpose of this proposal is to compare two implementation strategies to increase consistent use of PPE: (1) a health care worker provided training program followed by 3 educational outreach and coaching visits at the healer's place of practice vs.

Status epilepticus (SE) is the most common serious neurological emergency among children worldwide. In the low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) of sub-Saharan Africa, the burden of childhood SE-associated mortality and morbidity appears to be especially high. However, the phenotypes of childhood SE, clinical predictors of SE-associated mortality and of SE-associated neurodevelopmental morbidity, and genomic predictors of SE, SE-associated mortality and neurodevelopmental morbidity have not been well-characterized in this region.