CAB

The UNC Project has a Community Advisory Board that is composed of chiefs and other community leaders in the areas covered by UNC Project research and activities.  This board meets once a month with the Community team from UNC Project to discuss any issues in their communities, such as misconceptions or rumors about the research, or any problems the people in the community are having with study procedures.  The CAB also sensitives their communities about new and ongoing research projects.  For instance, they might hold a community meeting where they tell their constituents that UNC Project is doing a study on preventing mother to child transmission.  The community will be told where UNC Project is recruiting from, why their doing the study, and what will happen if they are eligible and choose to participate (and also what will happen if they do not choose to participate).  The reason for the CAB is to make sure everything UNC Project does is acceptable with the community, and so the communities around us understand what we are doing and why.

Since my study is starting soon we had to brief the CAB on Friday.  It was the first meeting in Malawi I've been to that was conducted entirely in Chichewa, but I was able to follow along for most of it (I probably understood about 20% but I could mostly tell what was being discussed by the few words I could understand and the facial expressions and gestures).  The good news is that the CAB members really seemed to understand the problem we are hoping to address with our study (and importantly, they agree it is a problem).  Since the CAB members are felt to really have a pulse on their populations I left feeling much more confident about the actual feasibility of our work!