Service Information

PZAT in collaboration with the OHSU-PSU School of Public Health and the Adolescent HIV Prevention and Treatment Implementation Science Alliance (AHISA) are committed to improving the health and well-being of young people in Zimbabwe. As an organization, we have a long history of bringing youth voices into their collaborations with governments, academia, other non-governmental organizations, the private sector, civil society, and communities. The goal of the project is to fully empower, scaffold, and build the capacity of youth to understand, inform, and participate in implementation science (IS) research that aims to improve their health and well-being.

Focus Areas

This project seeks to increase youth engagement in implementation research by developing training and a toolkit of developmentally appropriate materials that will increase their capacity and understanding of the IS research process, terminology, and designs. The project focuses on the following: Adapt PZAT’s community-developed training approach into an innovative, sustainable, easily disseminated training curricula to increase the capacity of youth to fully participate in IS research. PZAT using an existing training program, Chiedza Ukukhanya Health for Our Future, seeks to develop and implement a 7-day youth IS research academy. Adolescents and Young People (AYA) will be taught research concepts, methodology, and implementation. The training activities within the academy put focus on skills building through the incorporation of several activities, including group work, role-plays, and games. Recruit youth in Harare and Chitungwiza, Zimbabwe to train as advisors in IS research. These youths will serve to co-design and inform IS research studies across Zimbabwe. The recruited youths are to participate as youth IS advisors (YISA). Youth from among current youth volunteers, and youth patients at the SHAZ! HUB (recruitment site for the AHISA-affiliated research study), and youth identified at partner organizations will be selected to participate.

Aims

The goals of the training the YISA are 1) foster youth leadership across research in Zimbabwe, 2) contribute towards local capacity-building efforts, 3) ensure that research methods proposed in IS studies with AYA are matched to the stage and type of research question, 4) strengthen the buy-in and engagement of AYA in research studies, 5) provide accurate and timely information to IS research studies, 6) increase the credibility and relevance of IS research with AYA and 7) create mechanisms for timely and relevant dissemination of research findings to the community.

Evaluation

The PZAT team will collect data to continually monitor the progress of both the academy and research activities engaged in by the YISA. Participation, satisfaction, and knowledge/skill acquisition in the academy will be monitored. Deployment of YISA will be monitored on a regular basis, including the satisfaction of both the YISA and reviewed projects.

Summary

To close the gap between HIV science and practice, the proposed program will build the capacity of AYA in applying IS knowledge and skills to advance relevant and high-impact IS research.