The presentation explores larger social and contextual issues that may have important effects on the mooted implementation of male circumcision to assist in HIV prevention in sub-Saharan Africa. It raises questions about the findings reported from the recent trials in Kenya and Uganda, as well as the earlier trial in South Africa. It asks what additional evidence might be needed, and on what issues or problems, to provide a clearer picture of the potential social impact of scaling-up male circumcision. In particular, the paper argues that a broadly defined, social science research agenda needs to be developed and undertaken before any rolling-out of male circumcision is attempted. Biography
Professor Gary W. Dowsett, PhD, is deputy director at the Australian Research Centre in Sex, Health and Society at La Trobe University. The Centre is one of four national HIV/AIDS research centres in Australia and that country’s leading social research centre on sexuality and sexual health. Professor Dowsett is also an associate professor of clinical sociomedical sciences at Columbia University in New York, where he spent US academic years 2003-04 teaching in the Department of Sociomedical Sciences and working with the HIV Center for Clinical and Behavioral Studies. A sociologist by trade, he has long been interested in sexuality research, particularly in relation to the rise of modern gay communities. Since 1986, he has been researching the HIV epidemic particularly in Australia's gay communities and has worked on many international HIV/AIDS and sexual health projects since the late 1980s, including as a consultant to WHO’s then Global Programme on AIDS in Geneva, and as an adviser to other WHO programs, to the United Nations Development Programme and the Joint United Nations Programme on AIDS (UNAIDS). His international work also includes designing a seven-country study of young people and contexts of HIV/AIDS risk, reviewing HIV/AIDS intervention programs for men who have sex with men (MSM) in Bangladesh, a four-country review of HIV research and MSM in South and Southeast Asia, and collaborating on research on MSM in Fiji. He has recently been developing training programs in community-based research and qualitative research design, and has taught research design courses in Australia, Fiji and New York. He is author, co-author or editor of five books, more than 70 book chapters and academic papers, and over 60 other publications. His first book (co-authored with 3 colleagues) was voted one of the top ten most influential books in Australian sociology by The Australian Sociological Association in 2003. That same year, he was elected to the International Academy of Sex Research, and in 2005, he was awarded a prestigious five-year VicHealth Senior Research Fellowship researching masculinity, sexuality and health. |
