Life Histories, Health, and HIV/AIDS Data Centre

Identifying healthy pathways to adulthood for youth throughout Africa is critical to stemming the tide of AIDS. Between the ages of 15 and 25, both men and women show marked increases in the rates of HIV infections and often report that they are engaging in risky sexual behaviours. Their reasons for engaging in these risky behaviours are strongly shaped by the broader context of their lives: poverty, educational constraints, marital obligations, and family disruptions. Modifying behaviours and risks, therefore, has proven quite difficult without taking into account the life histories and contexts of these young adults. The goal of this data centre is to better understand the circumstances of these youths’ lives and to identify pivotal life transitions which would allow them to make healthier sexual choices.

In the wake of the AIDS crisis, demographic and health surveys and surveillance sites have grown in Africa. Many of these surveys collect detailed information on individuals’ major life events or life history data, including migration histories, previous marriages, educational records, and employment status. Yet data from these studies are often underutilized by researchers because of limited access and non-comparability across surveys.

Shelley Clark’s ambitious project will create a database on life course trajectories, sexual behaviour and health, that will harmonize data from demographic surveillance sites across a variety of countries. By gathering, cleaning, coding, and harmonizing a diverse array of longitudinal and retrospective health surveys conducted in Africa, this database will allow direct comparisons to be made for the first time between countries at different stages of the epidemic.