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Although several international and national HIV/AIDS conferences exist, there was not a national conference in Tanzania focusing on HIV/AIDS disseminating and implementation research conducted in the country and abroad. This created a missed opportunity for researchers to share their research findings with local policymakers and HIV program implementers who can influence the adoption and implementation of promising research in public health and clinical practice settings. In response, the first HIV/AIDS D&I Research Forum designed to enhance local D&I efforts for HIV research, was organized in Tanzania in 2018. This paper explores the perceived benefits of the HIV/AIDS D&I Research Forum and potential challenges of developing similar forums and recommendation for future HIV research D&I conference in Tanzania. During the second day of the Forum, which was held in September 2018 in Morogoro, Tanzania, a 1-hour structured brainstorming session was conducted with the Forum attendees (n = 50), including researchers, medical professionals, policymakers, representatives from different ministries. Transcription of the brainstorming session was analyzed to identify benefits of the Forum, perceived challenges for organizing similar HIV/AIDS research dissemination events, and recommendations for addressing the challenges. Overall, participants perceived the forum to be beneficial because it provided opportunities for strategic collaborations between researchers, policymakers, and other stakeholders and for them to discuss challenges for D&I efforts. Forum attendees also identified several potential challenges for future D&I research forums such as the abstract requirement which may deter non-researchers, costs, meeting frequencies, and lack of funding and coordination between organizations involved in D&I research efforts. To address these concerns, a recommendation was made to host a biennial national conference in order to allow more time for ethical review and feedback that can enhance contribution of the project to D&I efforts and to raise funds. The benefits identified for the Forum highlight the importance of organizing similar D&I meetings for HIV-related research at the national level in Tanzania. However, the potential challenges discussed need to be addressed in order to develop a sustainable national D&I research conference by incorporating recommendations that forum attendees proposed.

Background Although a number of international and national HIV/AIDS conferences exist, there is not a national conference in Tanzania focusing on disseminating HIV/AIDS research conducted in the country. This creates a missed opportunity for researchers to share their research findings with local policy makers and HIV program implementers who can influence the adoption and implementation of locally promising research to public health and clinical practice settings. This paper reports on the findings from a brainstorming session conducted at the first HIV/AIDS Research Forum designed to enhance local dissemination efforts of HIV/AIDS research conducted in Tanzania. Method During the second day of the Forum, which was held in Morogoro, Tanzania, a 1-hour structured brainstorming session was conducted with the Forum participants. Participants included researchers, medical professionals, policymakers, representatives from different ministries. Transcription of the brainstorming session was analyzed to identify benefits of the Forum, perceived challenges for organizing similar HIV/AIDS research dissemination events, and recommendations for addressing the challenges. Results Overall, 50 participants attended the Forum and they perceived the forum to be beneficial because it brought together researchers, policymakers, and other stakeholders working in HIV/AIDS programs and implementers. Having policymakers and researchers in the same place enhance the likelihood of policymakers using research findings to inform policies and influence adoption and implementation of effective interventions. Forum participants identified several potential challenges of similar local HIV/AIDS research dissemination efforts including the costs and lack of funding for organizing and hosting such forums or having repetitive presentations. To address these concerns, they recommended a biennial national conference in order to allow more time to raise funds to cover the costs associated with organizing such a conference. Conclusion The benefits identified for the Forum highlight the importance of developing a national level HIV/AIDS conference in Tanzania. However, the potential challenges discussed need to be addressed in order to develop a sustainable national HIV/AIDS conference by incorporating the recommendations that forum attendees proposed.

Many older adults in need of care are not able to afford formal caregivers or assisted living facilities, and prefer to age in their homes. We propose a new model of peer-care facilitated by a suite of four in-home technologies that enable older adults to provide some elements of care for each other. In this chapter, we investigate older adults’ experiences with the technology suite that we designed specifically to address the needs of urban, low-socioeconomic status older adults. We deployed certain technologies (Activity Clock, Community Window, Check-In Tree, and Trip Coordinator) in participants’ homes for 8 weeks with the aim of enabling an interactive, peer-to-peer support system within the community. We explored older adults’ technology-related privacy concerns with a privacy-enhancing feature (DigiSwitch) that allowed participants to control which peers in their network could view activity information. We conducted weekly surveys to assess loneliness, quality of life, interpersonal support, perceived burden, usability, satisfaction with the technologies, and privacy perception. We find that older adults not using DigiSwitch feel lonelier when the peer-care suite first gets introduced, but their perceived loneliness goes back to baseline over time. Furthermore, the presence of DigiSwitch does not increase caregiver burden and there is no additional caregiver burden when older adults provide peer care. The quality of life of older adults without DigiSwitch increases over time significantly, while neither the presence of DigiSwitch, nor time significantly affects users’ level of interpersonal support and privacy perception. In addition, participants’ overall satisfaction and perceptions on the usability of these technologies does not change significantly over time, indicating the technologies did not frustrate users.