Sep 12, 2012

The Guardian’s story is: Kenyan study shows that cash-transfer payments reduce sexual risk: New research shows that cash payments reduce risky sexual behaviour and HIV infection among orphans and children. Read it here.

The study was conducted by Carolina Population Center Fellows Sudhanshu (Ashu) Handa, Audrey Pettifor, Harsha Thirumurthy, and Carolyn Tucker Halpern. Handa presented the results of the study at the International AIDS 2012 conference held this summer in Washington, DC.

In The Guardian news story, Handa says, “Our study is based on the government of Kenya’s Cash Transfer for OVC [orphans and vulnerable children],” Handa Sudhanshu, a lecturer at the University of North Carolina and one of the study’s researchers, told IRIN/PlusNews. “We find that those aged 11 to 16 at baseline were seven percentage points less likely to engage in sexual activity four years later. Other studies have also shown a link between sexual activity and HIV-related behavioural risk and receipt of cash transfers, but those have been from small-scale experiments. Ours is the first study from an actual, scaled-up national programme.”

The study, Social Cash Transfers, AIDS Mitigation and HIV Prevention in Kenya, is based at the Carolina Population Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and is funded by the National Institutes of Health.