Social Science Research Council

The AIDS pandemic is as much a social, political, economic, and cultural problem as a biomedical one. HIV/AIDS is associated centrally with the collapse not just of communities and families but potentially of states, with some of the largest public health interventions ever and enormous questions about governance, a huge population of orphans and deep questions about intergenerational relations and cultural transmission.

Through its long-standing international networks, the SSRC is bringing together social scientists to address the basic social dynamics and analytic problems raised by the AIDS pandemic. Our goals are:

• To provide evidence of the social factors shaping the pandemic
• To foster comparative and cross-regional dialogue
• To strengthen capacity of institutions, researchers and practitioners to conduct social scientific study of HIV/AIDS and relate this to policy and practice
• To increase the priority of HIV/AIDS on global health, development and other policy and research agendas

 
Current initiatives include:
 

• AIDS, Security & Conflict Initiative
• Public Health Policy, HIV/AIDS and Gender
• Gender, AIDS and Crisis Prevention and Recovery
• The Joint Learning Initiative on Children and HIV/AIDS (JLICA)
• HIV/AIDS and Care-giving
• Socio-Cultural and Gender Dimensions of the HIV/AIDS Pandemic and Response
• Sexual Violence and Exploitation in Conflict Situations

Support provided by:

• Australian Agency for International Development
• Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade
• Clingendael: Netherlands Institute of International Relations
• Global Coalition on Women and AIDS (GCWA), UNAIDS
• The Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs
• Open Society Institute
• Rockefeller Brothers Fund (RBF)
• Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency
• UNICEF
• United Nations Development Programme
• United Nations Population Fund
• UNESCO
• World Health Organization