AAHub's HEY BABY Team Host Satellite Spoke for the PATA Summit 2023

In November 2023, the HEY BABY team from the Adolescent Accelerators Research Hub (AARHub), in collaboration with the Health Sciences Faculty at the University of Fort Hare, hosted a Satellite Spoke for the PATA Summit in East London. This year’s theme was "The Face of Care: Health Providers and Communities at the frontline of paediatric and adolescent HIV service delivery in South Africa". 

Dr Lesley Gittings facilitated the Face of Care in-country workshop which was a continuation of last year’s discussions held with healthcare providers about their experiences delivering services – the focus for this year was how some of the highlighted challenges can be successfully addressed.

Dr Jane Kelly and team shared insights from qualitative and participatory research with educators, nurses and service providers. Part of the session included group activities to map pathways of services that adolescent girls might need from pre-pregnancy to post-birth and through this identify opportunities for service integration.

Director of the AARHub A/Prof Elona Toska presented in one of the prime sessions discussing the importance of reaching the 95-95-95 global targets and moving beyond treatment to focus on achieving good quality of life for young people living with HIV.

Building on work done to date, two pipeline projects were presented, the first by Dr Christina Laurenzi (Stellenbosch University) which aims to explore pathways to improve retention in care for young adolescent mothers living with HIV and the second project presented by Dr Hlengiwe Gwebu (University of Fort Hare) and A/Prof Elona Toska focusing on supporting healthcare providers as parents first and this would build from the Parenting for Lifelong Health model. 

The team had fun with the PATA dance challenge that was played across all the PATA satellites, you can watch the video here: