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Greetings All!
We’re elated to start Week 1 of the course! The discussion forum will allow us to expand on module content. We also look forward to learning from one another via shared ideas, experiences, and expertise each week.
This week, we will start with introductions. Please tell the group about yourself and respond to the introduction of another GPP team member or learner.
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Hello team,
I must say i am very sorry for not having logged into the introductions page earlier, but i am very excited to finally be part of the team. I am Robert Mukwiza Sakutaha, for correspondence purposes, and conversations with classmates, i will prefer being called Uncle Bob, my stage name.
I work as an Early Childhood (or Preschool) Development Officer for an NGO called Chibombo Child Development Agency, a local partner for an International NGO called ChildFund Zambia. Our offices are in Lusaka, the capital city of Zambia, in Central Africa.
I trust this will be a worthwhile time spent interacting with you all. Greetings.
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Hello everyone, My name is Marie Elizabeth Theunissen. I am one of the GPP participants and must say i am loving every bit of interaction. I am an employee of FAMCRU which is both ACTG and IMPAACT affiliated. I am also serving on the Stellenbosch University Research Ethics Committee as a community member. I am currently the chairperson for the IMPAACT international community advisory board and serve on the scientific leadership group. My passion has and still is working with adolescents in a mentorship capacity as this is a field i believe still needs to be developed in terms of transitioning adolescents to young adults. I am an adolescent facilitator at our site , as well as an adherence monitor. I want to thank you all for being such a lively interactive group and appreciate your experiences that you share.
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Link to Google.
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For more than 12 years, I’ve had a chance to conduct HIV prevention research with a focus on vaccines, herpes suppression and PrEP. Throughout, it has become abundantly clear the need for stakeholder engagement to facilitate the research process and its content. It is my pleasure to be involved as a member of the leadership team launching this new course.
Looking forward to working and learning with you all over the next few months (and hopefully, beyond!).
Jonathan
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Hi everyone
What a great spread of expertise and experience we are hearing from these posts.
Responding to an earlier post from Bob, I think it will be interesting to understand more about people’s experiences of barriers to GPP, and good ways to overcome these; and I am sure that this forum will be a supportive place to reflect on some of the knotty issues we have all faced.
looking forward to lesson 1 …
Cathy
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I have 10 years of experience in HIV clinical research that includes over 15 HIV therapeutics and preventive studies. I joined the South East Asia Research Collaboration with Hawaii (SEARCH) in 2010. SEARCH is collaboration between the University of Hawaii, the US Armed Forces Research Institute for Medical Science and the Thai Red Cross AIDS Research Center to conduct HIV research. As the MSM Manager programs, SEARCH, Thai Red Cross AIDS Research Centre (TRC-ARC), I have to coordinate the works to support the conduct of all HIV studies.
I think GPP principles to be so helpful when I think about how to run our projects, plus the some of the theoretical issues around GPP are fascinating.Thank you for have this training and looking forward to learning with you all</span></p>
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Hi Everyone,
Its my pleasure to be part of this GPP family. I am Bernadette Kombo a Social Scientist with Kenya Medical Research Institute at the Kenyan Coast. I am somewhat new to GPP but being a proponent of locals participation in not only research but also in interventions I have a lot to learn from GPP. I am glad that I am in the midst of experts in GPP. I look forward to learning new things as well as sharing my experience in the field.
Kind regards
Bernadette
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Hello everyone. I am the Khelvon, sociologist at the National Institute of Health of Mozambique. I am very happy to be part of this platform, to interact and exchange experiences and knowledge of GPP. I coordinate the community involvment and also the recruitment for incidence studies and vaccine trials. I expect to get a lot of knowledge and debate in order to implement in my reality.
So, I am ansious about this online course and I hope also to interact and work with you all.
Regards colleagues.
Khelvon
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Hi all,
I am Agnes Nondo, It is so good meeting you and to be part of thisgreat team. I failed to make it last week because our site received study monitors from the WHO, I hope to catch up soon . i have been in reraech for more than ten years and I have come to appreciate the importance of stakeholder engageement in reseach, I need to learn more from the team and share lessons learnt if and when stakeholders are sidelined in reaseach. -
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Welcome DaShawn!
I can certainly understand why your attention is held by things like injectable PrEP trials and anti-stigma interventions… very cool stuff! Before Africa became my permanent home, I also lived in NYC for a chapter and really love to hear what is happening with PrEP in that context. The introduction and scale up has been fascinating. I think we will have some interesting global exchange on that topic!
All the best, Anne
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Hello Everyone,
My name is DaShawn Usher. I apologize for the delayed post for the beginning of the course. I’ve been moving all weekend and finally got a chance to find wifi and join in on the discussion. I currently work at the New York Blood Center’s research lab called Project ACHIEVE. I’m the Manager of Community Education and Recruitment. I oversee multiple research studies that deals with biomedical prevention (HIV vaccine trials and Injectable PrEP trials) and behavioral HIV prevention (personalized HIV testing app, anti-stigma and anti-homophobia community intervention, and some other cool projects).
I’ve worked in the field of HIV prevention since 2007 working full time at an AIDS service organization and attending college full time. I like the service side of the field, but the research realm truly keeps my attention. I like working with people and organizing communities that are underrepresented in research trials to be engaged in what is happening. I’m really looking forward to the course.
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Welcome, Bob! I really appreciate the honest sentiment about time constraints and enrollment pressures, and I too am hoping that you will exit the course with some very practical tools and ideas about how to concretely implement GPP at your trial site.
I am looking forward to hearing to picking your brain about your successes and challenges with stakeholder engagement during some of your trials– particularly passive immunisation! That’s an interesting topic and actually the subject of a case study in a future lesson.
Thanks for your contribution! Best, Anne
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Hello everyone. My name is Bob Bucklew and I am the Outreach Coordinator for the Case Western Reserve/University Hospitals AIDS Clinical Trials Unit in Cleveland, Ohio. Our Unit conducts both HIV treatment and prevention trials in northeast Ohio. Past, current and planned prevention trials have focused on vaginal microbicides, HIV vaccines, PrEP and passive immunization. Our trials range from Phase I to Phase III, with an accompanying wide variety of people to enroll – from low risk to high risk for contracting HIV. We are officially affiliated with three DAIDS-funded networks, the AIDS Clinical Trials Group, the Microbicide Trials Network (MTN), and the HIV Vaccine Trials Network.
I also have the privilege of serving as the Co-Chair of the MTN Community Working Group which has provided me the opportunity to contribute to the world-wide effort of developing safe and effective vaginal and rectal microbicides. I also am a representative of the MTN on DAIDS’ Community Partners where I serve as the Chair of the Research Priorities Working Group.
I am somewhat familiar with GPP as it has been widely reviewed and discussed within the MTN Community Working Group and Community Partners. We have found it to be very helpful in enunciating the CWG and CP’s positions on community engagement. I am much less familiar with the GPP as a guidance tool to be used in my role as Outreach Coordinator at our Unit. I have found that it always easier to set than to implement policy. Time constraints, enrollment pressures and the limited ability to get local input into protocols before they are finalized are all issues which can serve as barriers to the full implementation of GPP.
What I hope to get out of this course is a structure that we can implement here in Cleveland to formalize GPP implementation. While I believe that we are doing quite well in participant engagement, education and informed consent, I believe that we can do a much better job at the larger community stakeholder level.
Thanks to all who have worked on this course. I can only imagine the level of detail that was required. Good job.
Bob Bucklew
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Welcome John!
Yes, the success of GPP implementation during the FACTS 001 trial is very exciting. We can’t wait to hear about your real world strategies for creating a strong GPP culture and community at your site, and especially because your examples will span all stages of the research process. That kind of discussion is the true ‘meat’ of the course.
Cheers! Anne
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Hello everyone
Its a pleasure for me to be part of this exciting initiative
Meet John Mdluli, responsible for the community engagement program at the Aurum Institute Tembisa site. I have involved with GPP through FACTS 001 trial, the first ever study to implement GPP from the begging to finish. I am excited that we are now preparing for the results dissemination.
My scope of work include community preparedness for all studies to be undertaken at our site, coordinating CAB activities and managing the outreach and retention teams.
I am looking forward to this exciting on-line and hope to do well at the end of the course
Kind regards and looking forward to interact and work with you all
John Mdluli
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GPP is a small world.
Laura and Leader, I also know the DTHF team very well and the wonderful youth center in Masiphumelele!
Our geographic representation is quite staggering–we have participants from Uganda, Kenya, Rwanda, Moz, SA, Zim, Zambia, Thailand, and the US! It really shows how awareness of and support for GPP has evolved in such a short period of time! Amazing!
Best, Anne
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Hi everybody!
My name is Laura and I work as a clinical studies recruiter for Bridge HIV, a division of the San Francisco Department of Public Health.
I just graduated from university this past year and enjoy working in clinical research. I ultimately hope to attend medical school in the next couple of years, but in the meantime I am continuing to look for opportunities to dive back into sexual and reproductive health counseling and testing services in the city so that I can keep up my patient-provider relationship skills from the work I did in this field during school.
I am looking forward to learning from this course and from all of you!
Cheers, Laura Potter
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Thanks for posting, Stacey and Jane! Great to hear from you both!
It has been interesting for me to tap into your motivations for taking this course and for learning more about GPP. For me, I am truly excited to have that sense of being a learner among other learners. . And I truly hope this course becomes a real shared practice community. So please keep contributing, keep sharing, and as Stacey said… feel comfortable. We are all here to support and learn from each other!I encourage everyone to find some time over the weekend to complete their remaining assignments– whether it’s your profile, posting, the baseline, or even all three!!
Have a great Friday!
Best regards,
Anne
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Hi everyone! Thanks for getting set up and introducing yourselves. As we’ve said many times, we’re all very excited for the launch of the online GPP course. My hope is that this will mark a new era of GPP implementation and that the course helps strengthen community and stakeholder engagement in our field — and beyond! Looking so forward to hearing from you all and learning from your experiences — and hearing your feedback on the course itself! — over the next 12 weeks.
For those of you who don’t know me, I’m Stacey Hannah, a senior program manager at AVAC and oversee our GPP work. I’ve been with AVAC since around the time the 2nd edition of GPP was launched in 2011 and in my time have had the privilege of seeing it take hold more firmly in our field. I’ve also seen some real ‘GPP stars’ grow–many of whom are in this class! We all have valuable experience to share–whether this is some of your first experience with GPP, or whether you’re old hat. Please feel comfortable.. and continue to keep your thoughts coming!
Best
Stacey
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Dear Team ,
Don’t miss out on the baseline evaluation. It was quite a brain teaser for me.Try it out. It is getting to week end in Uganda. Catch up on Monday.
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I couldn’t agree more, Mare Michele! GPP is about the real world. I hope that by sharing our own insights and experiences, via the forum and work assignments, we can all rethink and possibly reconceptualize our approach to stakeholder engagement!
Many agree that the basic idea of stakeholder engagement is valid, but how does one develop a practical system that can actually be implemented, is relevant to the priorities of a trial site, and is truly aligned to the goals of the research? You can look forward to unpacking some of these ideas in the course!
Best, Anne
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Dear Colleagues,
The success of our work is based on knowledge, skills and commitment, one might have all those, but still sharing experiences would be a great addition that would help each one of us. I just finish to complete my baseline evaluation, theoretically, you may have an idea or knowledge of those questions asked in the baseline evaluation. What about in the real life in the field? thinking of that, I said, let me share with you my feelings I have now after completing the baseline evaluation, so that we all be ready to share our achievements in the field as well as challenges, so by the time this training will end, we will have a good package of skills learned from each other.
I wish you all a good weekend.
Marie Michele
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Hello everyone,
I am Community Engagement Coordinator of the Department of Retrovirology, Armed Forces Research Institute of Medical Sciences in Thailand. I work for CAB of the institute. Our CAB has established for 3 years. We used some techniques from GPP to work for CAB.
I am a clinical and community engagement nurse in cohort study in Pattaya, Thailand also. In the part of clinic nurse, I am a counselor in clinic.
In the part of community engagement I am educator and recruiter sometimes. I work in community such as outreach, workshop in bar, and join in community activity such as World AIDS Day activity. I followed GPP guideline in my job. I established the CE plan for each year. I tried to use M&E techniques in the plan also. I identified stakeholder before making a plan. The plan and real activities are quite well. However I think I still have some problems about identify stakeholder and some activities in the plan such as advisory mechanism.
I hope I can get new ideas and new knowledge to develop my skill to work with stakeholders from the GPP training course. I am glad to have conversation, learn together, share ideas with my new friends in the course also.
Thank you very much.
Patchara
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Hello everyone,
Good to hear from you all. My name is Leader Kanyiki Ngooyi, community engagement officer at Desmond Tutu HIV Foundation (DTHF) in Cape town, South Africa.
I am currently involved in the Facts 001 study which has formally implemented the GPP guidelines and now recruiting for the IPM 027 study.
More will follow. nice meeting you all online….
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Leader Kanyiki Ngooyi, it is nice to see a familiar organization represented here! I spent several months assisting an MRC-funded UCT/DTHF study at the Desmond Tutu HIV Centre in Masiphumelele one year ago, and it was an excellent experience working with colleagues I met at the Desmond Tutu HIV Foundation. Some of my best experiences with participatory practices in clinical research were from that project DTHF was helping to organize, which is wonderful and something I aspire to at my current job at Bridge HIV.
I look forward to hearing more about the studies you mentioned being involved with at DTHF!
Best, Laura
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Hi everyone,
I am study coordinator for HIV Prevention Clinical trial at Research Institute for Health sciences, Chiang Mai Thailand. In my experiences, I have been work in HIV vaccine trial network, Microbicides trial network and PrEP clinical study. I am also working for engagement/coordinate with community to communication education in community and some study I work as recruiter for recruitment.
For GPP, I have been joined GPP meeting about 3 times in Thailand and I think that it very useful for me to develop plan according to GPP guideline.
Thank you for have this training and looking forward to learning with you all
Pongpun
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Hello GPP Family ,
It is a pleasure joining you in this interaction!
Meet Mathias a community liaison officer with Uganda Virus Research Institute-International Aids Vaccine Initiative(UVRI-IAVI HIV Vaccine Program-Uganda).The Program is into phase 1 Vaccine trials at the site and field epidemiological studies in fishing communities in and along L.Victoria. These fishing communities are hard to reach with very limited access to health services.
I am at the forefront of all the community engagement activities that are research related ,out-reaches and collaborative efforts with service providers. This calls for many travels across waters with our Program boat.
Empowering me with GPP knowledge will take me an extra mile in cementing partnerships between researchers and stakeholders. I am happy having you as on-line classmates.
Looking forward to further interaction!
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Hello to all,
I have been working over 10 years of field experience in health research, mainly focusing on Health and HIV prevention. I provided technical assistance on social studies to different institutions/ organizations (public and private) regarding HIV/AIDS, Reproductive Health, and Family Planning at National level. I am an experienced social scientist and researcher with a passion in working on HIV/AIDS prevention; Reproductive Health and community outreach programs. I practiced my skills and enhanced my experience in different capacities in various research programs and institutions working as a PMTCT( Stopping Infection from Mother to Child) study coordinator from 2001 to 2004 through SIMBA Project. From 2004-2012, I also served as a Communication and Community Outreach Manager for Projet Ubuzima’s Microbicides Research Program financed by the International Partnership for Microbicide (IPM), a position I currently occupy in Rinda Ubuzima which is now doing a clinical trial on Ring Plus, is a study on safety and acceptability of vaginal rings that protect women from unintended pregnancy. I am also working as a regional representative in Health e Foundation based in Amsterdam.
I have been an active advocate at the National and International level for Microbicides Research as a member of former Global Campaign for Microbicide (now AVAC)
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Hi everyone,
I work at a research and resource-development group for HIV vaccine trials (HAVEG) based at a South African university (UKZN). We do empirical research of our own into some of the complex issues in trials like ancillary care or informed consent. I work with a great bunch of people from different backgrounds (consultants and collaborators) to do our work. We try to find ways to intersect with all the other interesting ethics work that lots of other people are doing.
We have found GPP principles to be so helpful when we think about how to run our projects, plus the some of the theoretical issues around GPP are pretty fascinating too.
I am so looking forward to being part of the course – with a particular view to how can such materials possibly be adapted sometime in the future to assist other stakeholders in these trials like IRBs/ RECs to increase the impact of GPP, and make trials more GPP-sensitive when RECs review protocols. And to learn more from all of you about engagement efforts around trials sites, and implementing GPP.
I have a ten-year old son – and no pets despite serious lobbying and advocacy from my son…!
It is wonderful to read everybody’s background and experiences – it is clear we are going to get a rich and interesting angle on the issues as we go forward. Thanks for this opportunity.
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Hi all,
I have worked at the Division of AIDS at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the NIH for over 20 years. During that time, I have worked with all of our research networks and the community in one capacity or another. I have served as a liaison to some of our network community advisory boads, have developed regional trainings for the community, and been an active member of our cross- network community group, Community Partners, since it was established in 2006. I also worked with other community outreach efforts that we supported, including the NIAID HIV Vaccine Research Education Initiative and Be the Generation Bridge project. I participated in the last update of the GPP guidelines and believe GPP has a lot to offer the sites in engaging community. Since I am not a site, I recognize I have alot to learn from all of you and am really looking forward to it.
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Hi everyone:
I am your GPP course facilitator. I have been an AVAC consultant since early 2011. I contributed to a major revision of the second edition of the GPP guidelines, and have been working closely with AVAC on the development of this GPP online training as well as other GPP resources and companion tools.
Aside from my work with AVAC, I bring a wide breadth of experience in biomedical HIV prevention research, international development, and capacity building for large scale public health programs. I fell in love with Africa as a university student in Tanzania in 1994, and after living and working all over the continent, I am now permanently based in Cape Town, South Africa with my partner and our five dogs.
I do have a life outside of GPP (sometimes), which entails lots of travel, time outdoors, and a passion for cooking.
I am so thrilled to have the opportunity to collaborate with such an experienced and diverse group of individuals. I can’t wait to get started on our GPP journey!
Again, please reach out with any questions or feedback. I am only an email away!
Best, Anne
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Dear all,
I am a trainee on the GPP course, I am very excited to reach this far with the GPP. I am currently coordinating the Community Outreach office at Makerere University Walter Reed Project. The nature of our organisation’s work is monitoring and investigating communicable disease threats of public health importance in Uganda and develop, evaluate, and provide interventions to mitigate the threats.
My office deals in coordinating outreach efforts, networking and stakeholder engagements on behalf of the organisation. I believe in depth understanding of the GPP, will enrich my skills in interacting with the outside community in reference to HIV prevention.
Taking an online course in the third world country like mine is not easy, but I am very hopeful I will succeed.
My sincere regards to you all, looking forward to interacting with you all.
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Hi Everyone,
I work at AVAC with Stacey Hannah on all things GPP! I will be supporting Anne Schley in moderating the course. My background and training has been in research ethics. I have always been interested in the role community plays in the research process. It is this interest that led me to the Good Participatory Practices and AVAC a year and half ago. I look forward to learning more about the work everyone is doing at their sites and how GPP can help that effort.
In addition to building implementation tools for the guidelines I also work on creating literacy materials for HIV cure research and support our domestic advocacy agenda.
Looking forward to working with everyone!
Please reach out for
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Hello all! I work at the San Francisco Department of Public Health with Erikan Obotetukudo and Jonathan Fuchs and have been working to develop this GPP course for quite a while! Some of my other projects have included managing an internship program for undergraduates who aspire to be HIV researchers and supporting the efforts of my team in workforce development and training. I am also a student in the Master’s of Public Health program at San Francisco State University. I look forward to meeting you all!
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