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Peers translate HIV health research into ‘plain speak’ on TikTok
21/04/2022
Three HIV advocates were recruited to translate a HIV research paper focused on person-centred care for a ground-breaking Knowledge Translation (KT) project that paves the way to improve understanding of health information amongst the HIV community.
Internationally, KT is a term that takes academic and conference papers and translates these into resources that help people understand specific and often complicated research. However in Australia, Knowledge Translation, as a tool to communicate research, is mostly unknown.
The research paper Quantifying unmet treatment needs among people living with HIV in Australia and other countries was the focus of the KT project where three authors: Ann Maccarrone, Fraser Drummond and Brent Allan partnered with three HIV advocates: Heather Ellis from Positive Women Victoria, and Beau Newham and Anthony McCarthy from Living Positive Victoria.
The three HIV advocates, all living with HIV, then analysed the research and created content so that the health messages were more likely to be understood by PLHIV. The result was a TikTok-style video, two memes and a newspaper-style article, communicating the role that person-centred care can play in improving health among people living with HIV, especially as they age.