Making National HIV/AIDS Response Responsive to Social Public Health: Lessons from Ghana

In this chapter, I illustrate efforts by a multidisciplinary team of researchers and practitioners (public health professionals, clinicians, social workers) to engage relevant actors to adopt and integrate social public health approaches into Ghana’s national response to HIV/AIDS. The chapter shares the implementation approaches and lessons from the Consortium. The initiative calls attention to the need to demystify public health practice and to destabilize age-old public health orthodoxies (where privileged “certificated” few, usually with biomedical background, are mandated to assure public health). Lessons from the initiative show that multiple actors (both expert and lay) are required to execute specific tasks and play unique roles.