Africa Health Research Institute

Research at AHRI

Africa Health Research Institute’s research is organised around four broad scientific domains – population science, basic and translational science, implementation science, and clinical trials – and around four intersecting scientific content areas: HIV, TB, emergent or re-emergent infection, and adolescent mental health. AHRI’s 30 faculty members have the freedom to pursue their own research agendas within the institute’s broader strategy.

AHRI’s research responds to urgent health challenges facing South African communities. In our research setting, >30% of the population is living with HIV, while lifetime TB disease prevalence exceeds 40% and the annual TB incidence – nearing 1% – is one of the highest in the world. In adolescent women, anxiety and depression (rate: 22%; 33% among 22-year-olds) cluster with violence, food poverty, alcohol use and HIV infection. Globally, mental health disorders impact HIV and TB control and commonly have an onset in adolescence.

AHRI’s HIV research strategy is focussed on prevention, with discovery of biological and social drivers of transmission, and translation of findings into interventions; surveillance, to discover critical trends in the HIV epidemic and understand the longer-term impact of health policy and interventions; and understanding the HIV reservoir, or HIV persistence, in adults and children, followed by testing of tailored interventions in clinical trials.

TB research at AHRI is organised around four components: TB pathogenesis through examining excised human lung, accessed via long-term collaborations with local hospitals; surveillance for TB via our HDSS, with the aim to understand transmission on a population basis; understanding, diagnosing, and intervening in subclinical, or asymptomatic TB disease; and finally, targeted clinical trials of novel TB drugs and vaccines.

AHRI’s emergent or re-emergent infection research area uses the institute’s SARS-CoV-2/Covid-19 strategy as a model to rapidly mobilise our population and laboratory infrastructure to understand short- and long-term consequences of an emergent or re-emergent infection, particularly within the context of HIV immune dysfunction and prevalent TB. It additionally harnesses world-leading, South Africa-driven collaborative structures, AHRI’s clinical trials unit and HDSS infrastructure to conduct clinical trials of novel drugs and vaccines.

AHRI’s adolescent mental health research area builds on our current studies of depression in pregnancy, and on well-established implementation research programmes in adolescent health. AHRI is uniquely placed to explore adverse childhood events, prolonged exposure to violence and economic hardship, as well as the effect of parenting and social protection in childhood against poor mental health outcome.

Multiple scientific platforms and core business structures support AHRI’s research endeavours, including a data science unit, and a clinical trials unit. AHRI’s public and community engagement model encourages research participants to be active partners in the development of a research agenda that is meaningful and directly relevant to their lives.

AHRI is committed to providing a research environment that develops good research practice and nurtures a culture of research integrity.

We also welcome the wide variety of opportunities for research and cross-disciplinary innovation in working collaboratively or in partnership with other institutions in South Africa and elsewhere in Africa and the world.

If you want to collaborate or discuss our research we would love to hear from you.  Please get in touch via communication@ahri.org.