This episode is produced in collaboration with the Sex, Research and Resistance Podcast and the Centre for Study of Global Development at the Open University. 

Martha Nicholson (facilitator), Dr Joyce Wamoyi, Dr Kevin Deane, and Professor Peter Keogh discuss research on the social determinants of sexual and reproductive health. Drawing from different disciplines, research contexts and institutions, we explore how sexual and reproductive health is managed and negotiated in the context of structural inequality and complex social worlds. Research shows that where we live, the education and work opportunities we have access to and the gender norms we grow up with may all shape people's ability to negotiate risks and manage a disease like HIV.

In part 1, we critique the WHO definition of the social determinants of health, drawing from examples to show the importance of including social determinants in research on sexual and reproductive health. They share experiences of researching HIV in the UK and Tanzania and discuss how the disease has evolved from an ‘individual’ to a ‘social’ issue, relevant to social scientists as much as medical professionals.

Bios

Joyce Wamoyi: Social and Behavioural researcher at the National Institute for Medical Research, Tanzania. Joyce has an MSc in community health and a PhD in social and Behavioural Sciences. For over 20 years, Dr. Wamoyi has worked on: Adolescents and Young people’s Sexual and Reproductive Health (SRH) behaviour; Structural drivers of SRH risk; HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment; Parenting/ families and child outcomes; stigma and discrimination in access to SRH services; and qualitative and participatory research methods. In her work, she has explored the dynamics of transactional sex in adolescents and young women's sexual relationships in sub-Saharan Africa. She is currently working on the evaluation of the quality of implementation for the scale up of the Parenting for Lifelong Health programme in Tanzania. She is a member of the WHO Behavioural Insights Technical Advisory Group and UNICEF Advisory Board for a multi-country project.

Peter Keogh: Professor of Health and Society at the School of Health, Wellbeing and Social Care at the Open University. Peter’s background is in community-based research and knowledge co-creation in the areas of HIV, LGBT+ health and rights and reproductive justice. Peter’s research focuses on the role of intimacy, embodiment, affect and materiality in people’s experiences of their sexual and reproductive health and rights. He engages critically with contemporary SRHR epistemologies drawing on biomedicalization, post-colonial and Marxist theory. Peter is involved in many projects which involve the co-creation of useful and applied knowledges with, by and for key communities.

Kevin Deane: Senior Lecturer and interdisciplinary specialist in Economics, Political Economy and International Development. Research interests focus on the political economy of health with an application to the HIV epidemic in Eastern and Southern Africa. Kevin has worked on a range of topics related to HIV including gender, migration, workplace programmes, HIV testing and the relationship between socio-economic status and HIV. He is also interested in the political and social determinants of malaria. Kevin is primarily a qualitative researcher with experience of conducting fieldwork in East Africa.

Martha Nicholson (facilitator): PhD Student in the Reproduction, Sexualities and Sexual Health research group at the Open University in the UK. Current research is a feminist ethnography on how nurses and midwives learn about abortion care in Northern Ireland. Working with a group of nurses and midwives, Martha is mapping out how abortion knowledge is produced, and how centres of learning and work may distort, silence and challenge access to that knowledge through dialogues, processes, and organisational texts.