Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant: Altruism in the Face of Stigmatization: Volunteering to Provide Home-Based Care for People Living with AIDS in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

Emory University, Atlanta GA

Investigators

Abstract

Graduate student Kenneth C. Maes, working under the supervision of Dr. Peter J. Brown, will study the relationship between altruistic, self-interested, and religious motivations of volunteer HIV/AIDS caregivers and their mental health over the course of their work in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Volunteerism in community health care has grown substantially over the past decade in Africa. In Addis Ababa, hundreds of poor, non-kin caregivers are volunteering with home-based HIV/AIDS care programs, in cooperation with the government health system. The findings of this research will apply to building cross-cultural theory about cognitive and cultural understandings of human altruism, relationships, and mental health. The immediate research objectives of this project are: (1) to document volunteer caregiver descriptions of the motivations, costs, and rewards involved in volunteering, and (2) to understand how holding and valuing different motivations amidst varying experiences of poverty and food insecurity influence care relationships with close patients and caregivers' own mental health over time. Objective 1 will be accomplished with ethnographic and cognitive methods over the course of 24 months. Objective 2 will be accomplished by carrying out an 18-month longitudinal survey of the motivational, socioeconomic and mental health aspects of volunteer home-based caregiving. Innovative and locally validated data collection methods will reveal and allow interpretation of the directional effects among cognitive (motivational), social (caregiver-patient relationships) and health-related variables. This project is important because it will generate knowledge useful to public health programs in Africa that are facing a serious lack of human resources. Parallel research at the same site (ALERT Hospital ART clinic), conducted by members of Addis Ababa University's Department of Community Health, will involve a longitudinal analysis of patient survival and morbidity. The results of this project will be of interest to bio-cultural anthropologists, health practitioners, and population health policy makers. This project will also bolster collaborative research and teaching relationships between Emory University and Addis Ababa University, and contribute to the education of an American graduate student.