Developing Action Plans in Youth Photovoice to Address Community-Level HIV Risk in Rural Malawi

Abstract

Youth-driven approaches to HIV prevention can engage youth and improve health outcomes. Photovoice has been used to engage youth in identifying the assets and challenges in their communities. In sub-Saharan Africa, youth remain vulnerable to HIV infection. This article describes a photovoice project, named Youth Photovoice, conducted in rural Malawi, which focused on community places and situations relating to risky sexual behaviors that place youth at risk of HIV infection. Twenty-four youth, ages 13–17 (12 males and 12 females), participated in Youth Photovoice. During the photovoice process, youth identified five community situations and places that put them at risk of unsafe sex and thus HIV infection: initiation ceremonies, isolated places, community celebrations, local businesses such as bars and rest houses, and church-sponsored activities. Youth used a systematic action planning process to develop action plans. They presented their action plans to local leaders and parents. Parents and leaders responded positively and agreed to help the youth carry out their plans. If their plans to address community situations that put them at risk of unsafe sex succeed, there will be a direct impact on reducing the risk of HIV infection among youth. Youth Photovoice provided the opportunity for youth to obtain new skills, build new partnerships, and present their ideas to community leaders. Integrating this action planning process into photovoice helped to guide the youth toward actualizing their HIV prevention plans in their community. This process can increase the effectiveness of photovoice initiatives to address other community issues in a wide variety of settings.

Participatory Action Research for Adolescent Sexual and Reproductive Health: A Scoping Review

“…The characteristics of included studies are reported in Table 1. Of the 30 included studies, two studies involved younger adolescents (aged 10-14 years) [13,14], 14 involved older adolescents (aged 15-19 years) [5,[15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27], and 13 studies involved both [13,[28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39]; however, one study did not define the age groups [40]. -Indicate what changes need to be made to the original intervention informing adaptation, implementation, and evaluation plans.…”

“…The studies were based in a range of different settings. Approximately half (n = 16) of the studies were conducted in high-income countries (HIC) [5,13,15,[17][18][19][20][21][22][23][27][28][29][30]33,39], and the other half (n = 14) was conducted in low-and middle-income countries (LMIC) [14,16,[24][25][26]31,32,[34][35][36][37][38]40,41]. There were nine from the USA [13,20,22,23,27,29,30,33,39], three studies from Australia [5,15,17], two each from Canada [18,19], and South Africa [24,26], one each from China [14], Kenya [38], Mexico…”

“…The Netherlands [28], the UK [21], Uganda [36], and Zambia [25]. There were three multicountry studies (South Africa and Lesotho) [16], (Bolivia, Ecuador, Nicaragua) [35], and sub-Saharan Africa [37].…”

Health Risks in Our Environment: Urban Slum Youth’ Perspectives Using Photovoice in Kampala, Uganda

“…This is not surprising given that Kampala is located on over seven hills and thus many slum settlements are found in the low-lying areas that are largely reclaimed swamps with high water tables. The night population of Kampala increase from 1.5 million in 2014 [2] to approximately 2 million in 2018 [37], the increment is largely attributed to the growing slum population. The increase in slum populations might be attributed to reclamation of wetlands.…”

“…We used photovoice to empower urban youth to take action about their community problems. Youth make over 30% of Uganda's population [37] and thus, it is imperative that they take full responsibility for their community challenges. Often, youth marginally engage in community initiatives, including those geared towards solving community problems.…”