Using theory to design an intervention for HIV/AIDS prevention for farm workers in rural Zimbabwe

The official estimate of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection in Zimbabwe by early 1995 was estimated around one million people or approximately 10 percent of the population. Zimbabwe, like most other African and Western countries, has no laws specifically covering employment-related Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) issues such as HIV screening. This chapter describes how a HIV/AIDS prevention intervention was generated for illiterate farm workers in one district of Zimbabwe using a combination of the social ecology theory and the structured dialogue approach proposed by Paulo Freire and later described by N. Wallerstein and V. Sanchez-Merki, A. Hope, S. Timmel, and C. Hodzi. It provides an overview of the problem and how it is constructed in farm worker communities. The chapter shows how theory was combined to generate the methodology for the intervention. It also provides a brief account of the methods that would be used to measure the process and effect of the intervention.