Introducing Myself

I, Valencia Lambert, went into the field of public health because of my desire to improve health outcomes in sub-Saharan Africa by employing a concentrated effort that tackles the social determinants of health and implements novel interventions based on epidemiological evidence. This summer opportunity will take me one-step closer to this goal.

As a Tanzanian young woman, I understand the importance of implementing culturally appropriate and structurally feasible public health programs/interventions. Hence why, I greatly value the power that qualitative studies have in informing the implementation of interventions/programs. Consequently, this summer I will conduct a qualitative study that primarily aims to understand the barriers to HIV testing and care among women (of 18-49 years) who have never or infrequently test for HIV, and examine if and how informal healthcare providers, specifically birth attendants, can bridge these barriers to improve HIV testing in Mbarara district, in Uganda. This study will speak directly to addressing the increase in new HIV infections disproportionately occurring among young women. Although HIV testing is well integrated into prenatal care in many African countries, including Uganda, many women do not engage in prenatal care programs, preferring to use services of traditional healers. This research will target these populations who have been difficult to reach through routine clinic-based programs.

My work will be supervised by Dr. Radhika Sundararajan and Dr. Juliet Mwanga-Amumpaire. Dr. Radhika Sundararajan is an assistant professor at Weill Cornell Medicine and Dr. Juliet Mwanga-Amumpaire is the director of the Epicentre Mbarara Research Center and Department of Paediatrics and Child Health at Mbarara University of Science and Technology. My qualitative study will be under their parent study (“Omuyambi: traditional healer support to improve HIV viral suppression in rural Uganda”, R01 MH132440, 2023-2028). Their parent study aims to implement a traditional-healer facilitated HIV support intervention in Mbarara district. Hence, my study findings hope to directly guide improvements to programs to expand HIV testing and linkage to care among this high-risk group.

Thanks to the generous support of The Women and Public Policy Program at Harvard Kennedy School, I will be able to conduct this qualitative study under the supervision of Dr. Radhika Sundararajan and Dr. Juliet Mwanga-Amumpaire.