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Chris Bonell, Letting Them Die: Why HIV/AIDS Prevention Programmes Fail, Health Education Research, Volume 20, Issue 2, April 2005, Pages 266–267, https://doi.org/10.1093/her/cyg099
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Catherine Campbell James Currey, Oxford, 2003 214 pp, ISBN 0-85255-868-6
Catherine Campbell's book explores the processes by which a multi-faceted and theoretically informed HIV prevention programme in Summertown, South African appeared not to work. The programme aimed to involve local youth, mineworkers and sex workers in peer education in order that people from these groups could modify their behaviour and enhance their sexual health. It also aimed to bring together representatives of these groups with more powerful stakeholders in order to develop a local community that would support such behaviour change.
The programme was informed by a number of theories drawn from social psychology, sociology and political science. Peer education was theorized as developing ‘bonding’ social capital whereby people with common interests might come together, support each other, and develop critical consciousness about how their circumstances shape their identities and predispose them to behave in ways that may damage their health. Stakeholder meetings were theorized as developing ‘bridging’ social capital so that socially excluded communities could engage with more powerful groups in order that aspects of the social environment that impede individuals' abilities to engage in health-enhancing behaviours are reduced.
