Title: ASRU wins UCT's Social Responsiveness Award for 2020

The AIDS and Society Research Unit (ASRU) was awarded the Social Responsiveness Award this year, in recognition of the social impacts of the Mzantsi Wakho study. This is UCT's highest honour for researchers whose work has been proven to have benefical impacts on policy-making and programming. As a result of Mzantsi Wakho's research, Rebecca Hodes (ASRU's director), was the lead author of South Africa's National Adolescent Youth Health Policy in 2017. This policy was co-authored with the National Department of Health and UNFPA, together with other study investigators and researchers. It draw on visual participatory components with adolescents and young people (aged 10 - 24). 

 Image: 12 January 2015, an adolescent fills in his clinic report card as part of an Mzantsi Wakho participatory research method. These reports, anonymised, were delivered to the National Department of Health, and they are featured in the National Adolescent and Youth Health Policy as one example of teen-led data at the centre of the report's research and writing within the Mzantsi Wakho study.

An article about this award to ASRU for the Mzantsi Wakho study is available here: https://www.news.uct.ac.za/news/research-office/-article/2020-10-08-social-responsiveness-award-a-unique-study-on-youth-and-hiv