An evaluation of the innovative potentials of a HIV pilot exploring medical pluralism in rural South Africa.

This article reflects on an internal evaluation undertaken to estimate the potentials of a community-university pilot project to be developed into a bonafide innovation that can be applied at scale. The focus of the community-university partnership has been to reduce the unintended consequences of medical pluralism on the HIV and AIDS epidemic in Waterberg district, Limpopo Province, South Africa. Despite promising outputs from the partnership - including an increase in adherence to antiretroviral therapy and a reduction in stigma among traditionalists living with HIV - the partnership wished to establish whether further funding should be applied for to take the pilot from its current prototype status to a more established innovation.

Leadership emergence: the application of the Cynefin framework during a bio-social HIV/AIDS risk-reduction pilot.

This article focuses on the utility of a knowledge management heuristic called the Cynefin framework, which was applied during an ongoing pilot intervention in the Limpopo province, South Africa. The intervention aimed to identify and then consolidate low-cost, innovative bio-social responses to reinforce the biomedical opportunities that now have the potential to "end AIDS by 2030″. The Cynefin framework is designed to enable leaders to identify specific decision-making domain typologies as a mechanism to maximise the effectiveness of leadership responses to both opportunities and challenges that emerge during interventions.

Weak signal detection: A discrete window of opportunity for achieving 'Vision 90:90:90'?

Introduction: UNAIDS' Vision 90:90:90 is a call to 'end AIDS'. Developing predictive foresight of the unpredictable changes that this journey will entail could contribute to the ambition of 'ending AIDS'. There are few opportunities for managing unpredictable changes.

Community Viral Load Management: Can Attractors Contribute to Developing an Improved Bio-social Response to HIV Risk-reduction?

This article reports on the first twelve months of a pilot study that was designed to improve community responses to HIV/AIDS in rural South Africa. The framework was designed to enable the modification of emergent attractor landscapes. Specifically, we report on the introduction of a primary probe; the secondary, community initiated probes and the attractors that emerged through the process.

Methodological approach and tools for systems thinking in health systems research: technical assistants' support of health administration reform in the Democratic Republic of Congo as an application.

In the field of development cooperation, interest in systems thinking and complex systems theories as a methodological approach is increasingly recognised. And so it is in health systems research, which informs health development aid interventions. However, practical applications remain scarce to date.

Re-imagining decision making: addressing a discrete social driver of HIV/AIDS through the lens of complexity science.

This article argues that decision making is a discrete social driver that can be associated with the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the Limpopo province in South Africa. The authors argue that complexity science can inform future research and interventions by presenting two decision making frameworks arising out of complexity science that have the potential to enable young people to better negotiate decision-making contexts whilst simultaneously opening spaces of dialogue that can mitigate the impact of HIV-risk in specific, punctuated contexts. The methodological design was prompted by findings from youth-oriented community engagement projects that include Communication Conversations and Sex & Relationships Education.

Reducing the overall HIV-burden in South Africa: is 'reviving ABC' an appropriate fit for a complex, adaptive epidemiological HIV landscape?

This article questions the recommendations to 'revive ABC (abstain, be faithful, condomise)' as a mechanism to 'educate' people in South Africa about HIV prevention as the South African National HIV Prevalence, Incidence and Behaviour Survey, 2012, suggests. We argue that ABC was designed as a response to a particular context which has now radically changed. In South Africa the contemporary context reflects the mass roll-out of antiretroviral treatment; significant bio-medical knowledge gains; a generalised population affected by HIV that has made sense of and embodied those diverse experiences; and a government committed to confronting the epidemic.

Expanding the prevention armamentarium portfolio: a framework for promoting HIV-Conversant Communities within a complex, adaptive epidemiological landscape.

The article describes a design journey that culminated in an HIV-Conversant Community Framework that is now being piloted in the Limpopo Province of South Africa. The objective of the initiative is to reduce the aggregate community viral load by building capacity at multiple scales that strengthens peoples' HIV-related navigational skill sets-while simultaneously opening a 'chronic situation' schema. The framework design is based upon a transdisciplinary methodological combination that synthesises ideas and constructs from complexity science and the management sciences as a vehicle through which to re-conceptualise HIV prevention.