Description
This year’s World TB day theme ‘Yes! We Can End TB: Commit, Invest, Deliver’, is a bold call for hope, urgency, and accountability. It calls for increased efforts to bring different stakeholders together and enhance each other’s strength. SSHIFTB wants to highlight transdisciplinary approaches to TB in which social science is used in transdisciplinary collaborations that integrate different scientific disciplines, experiential knowledge and societal actors – such as governments, NGOs, and local communities.
SSHIFTB is excited to host a World TB Day webinar on Tuesday March 25, 2025, 8 am EST/1 pm SAST/ 2 pm CET.
Please see below to find speaker order and information:
The Role of Impacted Communities’ Experiential Knowledge in a Transdisciplinary Approach to TB
Ashna Ashesh – Survivors Against TB, India
This talk will look at who are the impacted communities & what is experiential knowledge; why lived experience inputs matter in TB policy and care; learning from the professional experience of TB survivors who are public health professionals, lawyers, communication professionals etc.; and examples of how experiential knowledge has shaped policy and care
Bio Sketch:
Ms. Ashna Ashesh is a lawyer, public health professional, and MDR-TB Survivor. Ashna was Vice Chair, SEAR STAG-TB, WHO, and is a member of the WHO Civil Society Task Force on TB. She is a member of the Steering Committee (SC) of the ReLAY track of FAST-TB, and a part of The Building Experience Treating Tuberculosis with Expanded Resistance Project (The BETTER Project). She is associated with Survivors Against TB (SATB), a community collective in India that advocates for person and community-centered care. Ashna is a Member of the Governance and Management Committee for the National Technical Support Unit (NTSU), Central TB Division, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, India. She has served as a Subject Expert and Member on the Sub-Committee of Experts for Gender-responsive and LGBTQIA++ affirmative action in TB, Central TB Division, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, India. Ashna’s work focuses on community engagement, access to high-quality care including new diagnostics and treatment, a rights-based approach to care, TB and mental health, and gender-responsive TB care.
Community engagement within clinical trials: experiences and lessons learnt from conducting a DR-TB trial in Zimbabwe
Faith Mughodi – Milton Park CRS, Zimbabwe
This talk will be focused on community engagement strategies (collaborations) in communities that participated in DR-TB trial conducted in Zimbabwe, how these strategies were employed/used and the impact that these can have on the conduct of a TB clinical trial. Various challenges and remedies used will also be explored.
Bio Sketch:
I am a qualitative researcher with a background in Clinical Social work and specialize in clinical trials focused on prevention and treatment of Tuberculosis and HIV with over a decade of experience. I am currently based in Harare at the University of Zimbabwe-Clinical committees I also serve as a member-in-training of the ACTG Behavioral Science Subcommittee under the mentorship of Dr Jennifer Furin. I have special training in Systemic Counselling, qualitative Interviewing/motivational interviewing, ethnographic studies, conducting behavioral assessments, participant screening and selection. Through the integration of socio-behavioral science in biomedical studies I have also had the opportunity to design qualitative interviewing tools and informed consent forms.
I have interest in Tb treatment shortening, stigma reduction, treatment preferences and improving TB treatment adherence through innovative technologies and counselling. I place significant importance in identifying and reducing Barriers (Myths and misconceptions) to treatment of DS-TB/DR-TB & HIV and using socio-behavioral assessments to determine treatment choices and acceptability and the way this affects reception of new drugs for the treatment/prevention of TB/HIV. I consider the importance of factors affecting adherence, treatment impact and end user preferences and am Interested in advocacy for issues pertaining to TB healthcare and treatment.
Supporting TB sequencing in Botswana using empirical bioethics, Science and Technology Studies, and Implementation Science
Stephen Molldrem – The University of Texas Medical Branch, Institute for Bioethics and Health Humanities and Institute for Translational Sciences
This talk describes a series of qualitative studies aimed at assessing the feasibility and ethics of implementing of genomic sequencing for TB in Botswana. This innovative and interdisciplinary collaboration – ongoing since 2020 – utilizes approaches from empirical bioethics, Science and Technology Studies (STS), and Implementation Science to engage TB stakeholders and affected people in Botswana about the technology. To date, we have found that stakeholders in Botswana desire the implementation of sequencing for diagnostic and public health purposes, and feel that it can be done ethically in the country. We are now working with stakeholders to develop implementation strategies for targeted next-generation sequencing (tNGS) for TB, in-line with WHO guidelines released in 2024.
Bio Sketch:
Dr. Stephen Molldrem is a qualitative social researcher, health policy analyst, and ethnographer situated in Science and Technology Studies (STS), public health ethics, and critical data studies. He is an Assistant Professor at the University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB) in the Department and Institute for Bioethics and Health Humanities within the School of Public and Population Health. He is also affiliated with the UTMB Institute for Translational Sciences. Stephen’s work in TB is a focal area in his research program on the ethical and social implications of the global scale-up of genomic sequencing infrastructures to support infectious disease research and control. Stephen works across STS, bioethics, and Implementation Science to understand how the implementation of next-generation sequencing technologies is reshaping global TB elimination policy and Botswana’s TB response. Since 2020, he has collaborated with partners in the US, Germany, and Botswana to understand and support the scale-up of TB sequencing in Botswana. He has secured US National Institutes of Health funding and other grant support for this work. Dr. Molldrem is also a Co-Principal Investigator of the US National Science Foundation-funded “Knowledge of AIDS” network and looks forward to bridging discussions between critical social studies of TB and HIV.
Moving beyond Directly Observed Therapy
Jonathan Stillo – Department of Anthropology, Wayne State University
This talk will discuss moving away from DOT to a more patient-centered, human-rights based approach.
Bio Sketch:
Dr. Jonathan Stillo is a medical anthropologist and an Assistant Professor who teaches Anthropology and Public Health at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan. His work and passion focuses on using anthropological and global health approaches to reduce human suffering in the world. He has received research grants from the US National Science Foundation, The US Department of State, Fulbright-Hays, and The Social Science Research Council, among others. Since 2006, Jonathan has been researching tuberculosis (TB) in Romania—including living at a Romanian TB sanatorium for several months and interviewing hundreds of patients over the course of more than five years living in Romania. His research focuses on the social, economic and structural aspects of TB, particularly antibiotic resistant varieties. Jonathan has served as an International Expert on the World Health Organization teams that conducted the 2014 review of Romania’s national TB program, as well as the TB program review in Republic of Moldova in 2013. In 2016, he was the lead author of an ECDC supported proposal for introducing integrated, community based support for people with TB in Romania. He is the elected Co-Chair of the TB Europe Coalition and a member of the Global TB Community Advisory Board. in 2019, he became the coordinator of the World Health Organization’ European Office’s working group on Patient Centered Tuberculosis Care.
Using knowledge for action: TB Proof as powerful collaboration
Helene-Mari Van Der Westhuizen – TB Proof and Oxford University
Helene-Mari will reflect on synergies between research collaborations and TB Proof’s advocacy work. She will share insights from current projects, key enabling steps, and plans for future work.
Bio Sketch:
Dr Helene-Mari van der Westhuizen is a postdoctoral researcher and lectures in global health at Oxford University. She has expertise in case study research and different types of evidence syntheses. She trained as a medical doctor in South Africa and completed her doctoral research at Oxford University using qualitative methods to examine TB prevention in rural, low-resource contexts. Her research on tuberculosis and COVID-19 prevention has been relied on for national and international policy and she has led evidence syntheses for the World Health Organisation on infection control. In 2022 she was awarded a fellowship in global health that focussed on pandemic preparedness policy. She is co-founder and vice-chair of the Board of the Tuberculosis advocacy organisation, TB Proof. Key areas of work through TB Proof includes mitigating TB stigma and policy implementation accountability. She is currently leading a realist review on participatory research methods in health funded by the Wellcome Trust.
