HIV Surveillance in Hard to Reach Populations

Catalog description

In the context of health sciences, sex workers, people who inject drugs, men who have sex with men, transgender persons, migrants, homeless persons, youth living on the streets and other stigmatized and vulnerable populations, are at higher risk for HIV, TB, hepatitis, and other infections. Measuring the behavioral and biological risks affecting these populations is essential to creating effective prevention programs, allocating funding and modeling future epidemic scenarios. Respondent driven sampling (RDS) is a highly robust and effective method to recruit samples of ‘hard-to-reach’ populations that are connected through social networks. This course will provide participants with practical and relevant up-to-date information about the methodological and theoretical issues and analytical concerns from one of RDS’s world-leading practitioner. It will draw on a variety of lectures, presentations of actual field research, hands-on analysis and practical experience in designing surveys using RDS.