The Caribbean Vulnerable Communities Coalition (CVC), along with the University of Alabama, Birmingham were named 2020 winners of the prestigious Robert Carr Research Award. The award was made in recognition of their collaborative research to estimate the size of key populations in the Eastern Caribbean States.
The Robert Carr Research Award, made every two years at the International AIDS conference, recognizes the collaboration between community organizations and academic researchers to improve outcomes for highly stigmatized and underserved populations. It is sponsored jointly by the International Council of AIDS Service Organizations, Human Rights Watch, the International AIDS Society and the Center for Public Health and Human Rights at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
In announcing the award, ICASO Board Member Yolanda Paul noted that the award reflects Robert’s vision for collaborative work in the HIV response. “The driving force behind the Robert Carr Research Award has and continues to be Robert’s commitment to translating findings from research collaborations between community and academic partners into tangible policy development and advocacy efforts..to advance human rights based principles and practices, especially in countries where communities are disproportionately affected by HIV and communities which continue to face discrimination, social rejection, violence, imprisonment often by government officials and agencies,” she said.
In acknowledging the award, CVC’s Head of Monitoring, Evaluation and Research, Dr. John Waters thanked the organizers for the recognition. “It is a tremendous honour to accept this award on behalf of the research team, including those who took part from the Caribbean Vulnerable Communities Coalition, the University of Alabama at Birmingham and the myriad of community groups and National AIDS Programme offices scattered across the Eastern Caribbean. There are simply too many people to thank, but they all know who they are and why this award would never have been possible without each and every one of them. I think that this award is a recognition of the importance of communities. It reminds us that ending AIDS can only be achieved with a strong community voice and full civil society presence,” he said.
Dr. Waters notes that estimating the size of populations most at risk for HIV Infection is critical to understanding each country’s HIV epidemic as well as for planning and monitoring an effective response. “If we do not know the denominator of say transgender women, men who have sex with men, or sex workers, how are we to know whether we are reaching them? If we think that the denominator for transwomen is a 100 and we are reaching 50 of them, then we are not doing so badly. We would be reaching 50% of the population. But what if that number is 1,000 and not a 100, then we would only be reaching 5%. We would be failing miserably. That is why it is so critical to know the size of the particular population,” the researcher said.
Dr. Waters further argues that key populations are largely invisible in routine HIV surveillance and in research. “Widespread stigma and discrimination as well as criminalisation of behaviours such as sex work and buggery pushes these populations underground making it hard to enrol these subjects in research. This lack of data often leads to neglect of their specific needs by health care providers and policy makers. Partnerships with community members, organizational representatives, and academic researchers are therefore critical to break the cycle of invisibility and neglect. By providing the structures for full and equal participation in research by community members, and sharing the control over all phases of the research process with them, we have shown how we are able to enhance the research outcomes and “actionability” of the results,” he said.
To strengthen the role of key populations in research efforts, the CVC has embarked on a number of research initiatives over the past years, including training community actors and key populations in participatory and action research approaches, as well as ensuring leadership of research efforts and full inclusion in operational research interventions.
