Diet, Environment, and Choices of positive living (DECIDE study)
Evaluating personal and external food environment influences on diets among PLHIV and families in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.
People living with HIV (PLHIV) face high food insecurity and double disease burden because food insecurity leads to lower adherence to treatment and poor health outcomes, while long-term treatment puts them at a higher risk of obesity and dyslipidemia. Caregiving and social structures of food culture further marginalize women in these contexts. New research shows that there are strong gender dimensions to dietary intake, adequacy, and survival rates among PLHIV. However, a gap remains in documenting the various domains in which these differences emerge, including capacity to procure food, bargaining power, social norms, and appetite since diagnosis. Further, little is known about how an HIV diagnosis affects the dietary patterns of uninfected family members. In the DECIDE study, we use a gender lens to explore and characterize the drivers of food choice, food environment, and dietary adequacy among PLHIV and their families in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Our multiple-method approach and study findings will provide a robust understanding of the underlying motivations behind dietary choices and patterns among PLHIV and their families. Such data will be useful in shaping nutritional guidelines and interventions to disrupt the impact of the double disease burden. The DECIDE study will be done through an AAPH – established Dar es Salaam Urban Cohort Study (DUCS) Surveillance System in Ukonga Ward, Dar es Salaam.
DECIDE has two major objectives. One being to conduct qualitative evidence synthesis (QES) on food choice among PLHIV. QES is an emerging systematic review technique in the field of qualitative research, and QES on food environment on this topic would be an important methodological contribution, while also building the knowledge base (Booth et al., 2016). The other objective is to bring together three methodologies (qualitative, survey, and geo-spatial mapping) to comprehensively characterize external and personal FEs including food choice and nutrient adequacy of diets among PLHIV and their households as guided by Turner’s food environment framework and Giddens’s structuration theory.
AAPH is leading in the DECIDE research data collection for specific times per protocol as determined by partnering institutions; Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Purdue University, MUHAS and University of Illinois at Chicago.