Learners’ perspectives on training for HIV management in sub-Saharan Africa: Insights from the AFREhealth HIV project

African Journal of Primary Health Care & Family Medicine

 
 
Field Value
 
Title Learners’ perspectives on training for HIV management in sub-Saharan Africa: Insights from the AFREhealth HIV project
 
Creator Lediga, Manoko Couper, Ian Martin, Shayanne Reid, Michael Dassah, Edward Derbew, Miliard de Villiers, Marietjie Forster, Maeve Gachuno, Onesmus Haruzivishe, Clara Kazembe, Abigail Motlhatlhedi, Keneilwe Nadesan-Reddy, Nisha Ngoma, Catherine Odaibo, Georgina Suleman, Fatima von Zinkernagel, Deborah Sears, David
 
Subject Education, Rural Health HIV management; interprofessional collaboration; AFREhealth HIV; healthcare professionals; sub-Saharan Africa.
Description Background: The African Forum for Health Education and Research human immunodeficiency virus management training (AFREhealth HIV) project was launched in 2019. The project offers a reimagined model for interprofessional training and mentorship to improve clinical care and equip healthcare workers with the technical knowledge and clinical tools to respond to HIV and other health issues.Aim: The study aims to evaluate learners’ experiences of interprofessional health workforce capacity building across sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) to enhance HIV management.Setting: Participants included pre-service medical and nursing students and early career professionals (learners). Learners were associated with 14 AFREhealth partners in 11 SSA countries.Methods: Learners attending AFREhealth HIV training workshops were invited to provide feedback using a standardised online form, which included 28 Likert-type questions and 3 open-ended questions. Analysis of the 3 open-ended questions was done by coding responses into a set of common themes and sub-themes.Results: Findings showed that of the 3711 learners who participated, only 2570 completed the post-training evaluation. Findings also showed that the learners appreciated the approach adopted in the workshops and believed they gained significant knowledge and skills for themselves. The importance of collaborative, team-based and interprofessional approaches throughout the training was highlighted.Conclusion: The training approach adopted by the AFREhealth HIV project has proven to be highly effective. The project has thus continued to target final-year health professional students and working health professionals at affiliated training sites, with module workshops being offered both online and onsite.Contribution: Collaborative and interprofessional approaches to training health professionals for HIV management can improve knowledge, skills and, very importantly, attitudes, with the potential thus to improve the quality of team-based care provided especially in low-resource settings.
 
Publisher AOSIS
 
Contributor University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) and with funding from the Human Resources and Services Administration (HRSA)
Date 2025-10-24
 
Type info:eu-repo/semantics/article info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion — Qualitative research
Format text/html application/epub+zip text/xml application/pdf
Identifier 10.4102/phcfm.v17i1.4789
 
Source African Journal of Primary Health Care & Family Medicine; Vol 17, No 1 (2025); 8 pages 2071-2936 2071-2928
 
Language eng
 
Relation
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https://phcfm.org/index.php/phcfm/article/view/4789/8753 https://phcfm.org/index.php/phcfm/article/view/4789/8754 https://phcfm.org/index.php/phcfm/article/view/4789/8755 https://phcfm.org/index.php/phcfm/article/view/4789/8756
 
Coverage Africa — Healthcare professionals
Rights Copyright (c) 2025 Lediga M, Couper I, Martin S, et al. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
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