I was awarded the UKRI FLF (round 2) to conduct the study POWER "Protecting women from economic shocks to fight HIV in Africa".

The UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship led to the discovery of a new approach to prevent HIV among young African women, a group disproportionally affected by HIV/AIDS globally.  

POWER recruited 1,500 adolescent girls and young women in urban Cameroon (750 female sex workers and 750 women engaged in transactional sex) who were followed over 12 months in order to measure the cost-effectiveness of a formal shock-coping strategy to prevent HIV.

 We found that adolescent girls and young women engaged in transactional sex who received the intervention were 89% less likely to acquire HIV at 12 months (OR = 0.109, 95% CI [0.014, 0.870]; p = 0.036). The intervention proved highly cost-effective, with an incremental cost-effectiveness ratio of £2,102–£2,436 per disability-adjusted life year averted.

To our knowledge, this is the first study demonstrating the cost-effectiveness of a formal shock-coping strategy for HIV prevention, reinforcing the critical need for structural and economic interventions to prevent HIV.