STRIVE India Stigma Impact Case Study.pdf
Stigma remains a major barrier to HIV prevention and treatment. The Asia Regional Office of the International Center for Research on Women (ICRW-ARO) adapted a global framework for understanding and addressing stigma in five different population settings in India and evaluated its impact. Through engagement with local and national stakeholders, supported by accessible summaries of the findings, ICRW ARO and partners achieved significant and ongoing impact on structural stigma-reduction.
At local level, this led institutions (for instance hospitals, sex-worker collectives and local government) to establish new guidelines, policies and training to continue and expand steps to reduce stigma. Centrally, the National AIDS Control Organisation (NACO) established a Stigma Technical Resource Group and appointed ICRW-ARO director, Dr Ravi Verma, to chair it. NACO continues to invite ICRW-ARO to contribute guidance on stigma reduction and ways to address the structural drivers of HIV more broadly, for example in the drafting of the National AIDS Control Programme (2017–24).
This case study provides details of how STRIVE achieved this research impact through:
- increasing research uptake capacity
- making changes at the local level
- ICRW-ARO influencing NACO and NACP
