Ensuring an optimal environment for peer education in South African schools: Goals, systems, standards and policy options for effective learning.

Peer education has long been seen as a key health promotion strategy and an important tool in preventing HIV infection. In South African schools, it is currently one of the strategies employed to do so. Based on both a recent research study of peer education across 35 schools and drawing on multiple previous studies in South Africa, this paper examines the key elements of peer education that contribute to its effectiveness and asks how this aligns with current educational and health policies.

Addressing adolescents' risk and protective factors related to risky behaviours: Findings from a school-based peer-education evaluation in the Western Cape.

Background: Peer-education programmes aim to bring about attitudinal and behavioural changes in their target audience. In the South African educational context, peer education is a favoured approach in dealing with issues such as HIV and AIDS, sexual decision-making and substance misuse. Given the reliance on peer-education programmes in the educational system, it is important to establish how well they are working.

'Something for something': the importance of talking about transactional sex with youth in South Africa using a resilience-based approach.

Transactional sex is a common feature of sexual relationships in South Africa but has severe health implications for those who engage in it. This paper presents perspectives on transactional sex based on interviews and focus group discussions with young people in Gauteng and Limpopo, South Africa. The discussions were part of an evaluation of a peer education programme promoting HIV prevention called Vhutshilo, aimed at 14-16 year olds.

Social and structural factors associated with vulnerability to HIV infection among young adults in South Africa.

There is increasing focus on social and structural factors following the marginal success of individual-level strategies for HIV prevention. While there is evidence of decreased HIV prevalence among young individuals in South Africa, there is still a need to monitor HIV incidence and prevalence in this vulnerable group as well as track and prevent high-risk sexual behavior(s). This study investigated the social and structural factors that shape the context of vulnerability to increased risk of exposure to HIV infection.

Measuring change in vulnerable adolescents: findings from a peer education evaluation in South Africa.

Introduction: In the context of poverty and HIV and AIDS, peer education is thought to be capable of providing vulnerable youth with psychosocial support as well as information and decision-making skills otherwise limited by scarce social and material resources. As a preventative education intervention method, peer education is a strategy aimed at norms and peer group influences that affect health behaviours and attitudes. However, too few evaluations of peer-led programmes are available, and they frequently fail to reflect real differences between those who have been recipients of peer education and those who have not.

Bereavement, silence and culture within a peer-led HIV/AIDS-prevention strategy for vulnerable children in South Africa.

In addressing the psychosocial effects of the HIV and AIDS pandemic among vulnerable children, the issue of bereavement appears inadequately addressed. Amid the global discourse on children orphaned and made vulnerable by HIV and AIDS, this paper explores how cultural contexts and social environments in South Africa shape children's experience of grief. The argument draws on a number of qualitative studies and uses empirical evidence from an evaluation of a peer-led HIV/AIDS-prevention strategy aimed at providing psychosocial support for 10- to 13-year-old South African children living in resource-poor communities.