After 2 decades of mostly individual-behavior based research on HIV/AIDS, a new understanding has begun to emerge of the social and cultural factors that structure vulnerability to HIV infection and shape the possibilities for prevention and treatment. In spite of the fact that they have received relatively little research attention, religious organizations have been central to the response of HIV/AIDS since the very beginning of the epidemic. In few countries has the complex impact of religion and religious organizations in relation to HIV/AIDS been more powerful than Brazil. The proposed study seeks to: 1) Develop a comparative analysis of the multiple ways in which Catholic, Evangelical Protestant, and Afro-Brazilian religions have responded (at the policy, institutional and population levels) to HIV/AIDS in Brazil; 2) Empirically document the importance that each of these 3 major religious traditions has given to HIV/AIDS, and the reasons that have led them to do so; 3) Assess, through a series of case studies, the ways in which the responses of each religious traditions has interacted with local communities, the wider social universe of civil society, and the nation- state, in impacting upon the broader response to AIDS; and, 4) Through comparative analysis, to more fully understand the ways in which both importance and impact have been influenced by the religious belief system or religious doctrine of each tradition, the organizational and institutional structures that each exhibits, and the ways in which each interacts with and articulates itself with communities, civil society, and the state, in order to shape the broader social and political response to AIDS. The project will employ a combination of qualitative and quantitative methodologies over a 5 year period, including archival research, surveys, participant observation, oral histories, in-depth interviews, life history interviews and case-studies in the 5 study sites, in order to capture and chronicle the dynamic trajectory of an extremely multifaceted role of religious organizations in the Brazilian response to the HIV/AIDS epidemic. The extensive and in depth fieldwork is necessary given the scope of the project and its goal of assessing the role of religious organizations in the country's mobilization in response to AIDS.

Agency
National Institute of Health (NIH)
Institute
Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health & Human Development (NICHD)
Type
Research Project (R01)
Project #
5R01HD050118-04
Application #
7424986
Study Section
Special Emphasis Panel (ZRG1-AARR-F (02))
Program Officer
Newcomer, Susan
Project Start
2005-05-10
Project End
2010-04-30
Budget Start
2008-05-01
Budget End
2009-04-30
Support Year
4
Fiscal Year
2008
Total Cost
$485,975
Indirect Cost
Name
Columbia University (N.Y.)
Department
Public Health & Prev Medicine
Type
Schools of Public Health
DUNS #
621889815
City
New York
State
NY
Country
United States
Zip Code
10032
Wilson, Patrick A; Valera, Pamela; Martos, Alexander J et al. (2016) Contributions of Qualitative Research in Informing HIV/AIDS Interventions Targeting Black MSM in the United States. J Sex Res 53:642-54
Seffner, Fernando; Garcia, Jonathan; Muñoz-Laboy, Miguel et al. (2011) A time for dogma, a time for the Bible, a time for condoms: building a Catholic theology of prevention in the face of public health policies at Casa Fonte Colombo in Porto Alegre, Brazil. Glob Public Health 6 Suppl 2:S271-83
Garcia, Jonathan; Munoz-Laboy, Miguel; Parker, Richard (2011) Vulnerable salvation: evangelical Protestant leaders and institutions, drug use and HIV and AIDS in the urban periphery of Rio de Janeiro. Glob Public Health 6 Suppl 2:S243-56
Garcia, Jonathan; Parker, Richard G (2011) Resource mobilization for health advocacy: Afro-Brazilian religious organizations and HIV prevention and control. Soc Sci Med 72:1930-8
Rios, Luis Felipe; de Aquino, Francisca Luciana; Muñoz-Laboy, Miguel et al. (2011) The Catholic Church, moral doctrine, and HIV prevention in Recife, Brazil: Negotiating the contradictions between religious belief and the realities of everyday life. Cult Relig 12:355-372
Murray, Laura R; Garcia, Jonathan; Muñoz-Laboy, Miguel et al. (2011) Strange bedfellows: the Catholic Church and Brazilian National AIDS Program in the response to HIV/AIDS in Brazil. Soc Sci Med 72:945-52
Rios, Luis Felipe; Oliveira, Cinthia; Garcia, Jonathan et al. (2011) Blood, sweat and semen: the economy of axé and the response of Afro-Brazilian religions to HIV and AIDS in Recife. Glob Public Health 6 Suppl 2:S257-70
Wilson, Patrick A; Wittlin, Natalie M; Munoz-Laboy, Miguel et al. (2011) Ideologies of Black churches in New York City and the public health crisis of HIV among Black men who have sex with men. Glob Public Health 6 Suppl 2:S227-42
Muñoz-Laboy, Miguel A; Murray, Laura; Wittlin, Natalie et al. (2011) Beyond faith-based organizations: using comparative institutional ethnography to understand religious responses to HIV and AIDS in Brazil. Am J Public Health 101:972-8
Munoz-Laboy, Miguel; Murray, Laura R; Wittlin, Natalie et al. (2011) Divine targets: youth at the centre of Catholic and Pentecostal responses to HIV and AIDS in Brazil. Cult Health Sex 13:657-68

Showing the most recent 10 out of 18 publications