Wen we were conducting community engagement in our community we realised that the is an educational gap about research when it comes to our health service providers specifically professional nurses. this has led us to structure our community engagement/education plan to continuously educate nurses and also student nurses about clinical trials and ethics involved in clinical trials ( this group is was the most influential group to discourage the community from participating in clinical trials). This strategy has helped us to reduce misconceptions about clinical trials and participating in clinical trials it has also helped with recruitment as nurses have become willing to refer participants to our site.
A secondary and yet equally important benefit is the ability to community with different populations within our community such as LGBTI, religious and traditional groups that do not believe in modern medicine. we are now aware of the expected challenges and how we can overcome them as we are slowly building trust with the above mentioned groups.
LGBTI: we managed to receive a training session for all staff from an LGBTI representative (OUT well being clinic) on how to engage the LGBTI community the different identities within the LGBTI community, sex as a form of identity and as an act.
Religious groups: the first challenge we encountered was gender inequality, abuse and violence for example 14 year old girls being made to drop out of school and forced into marriage.
women being discouraged to seek out contraceptives as well as medical services without the supervision/consent of a male
Traditional healers. their still traditional healers who advocate for HIV being a whit mans disease and that they can cure it. in most cases they classify HIV symptoms for that of a ritual,ethnic or ancestrally calling that requires for the person to become an initiate to be a traditional healer.
