PROJECT SUMMARY For six years, the Tsogolo La Thanzi (TLT) study, an NICHD-funded population-based cohort of women and men from Balaka, Malawi aged 15-25 when they were enrolled in 2009, has been following young adults as they navigate relationships, childbearing, and the avoidance of or infection with HIV within the context of a generalized AIDS epidemic. TLT has enrolled over 3000 individuals and collected 10 waves of data, covering a 6-year period (2009-2015) that spans massive changes in the HIV treatment context in Malawi as well as the ages of peak incidence and peak fertility for female respondents. This rich and complex data source contains several innovative features that can be used to advance research in the areas of HIV, fertility, and the life course: a) closely-spaced interviews that allow careful ordering of key events and specification of causal relationships, b) a dyadic approach to relationships, c) an experimental approach to HIV testing and counseling (HTC), and d) biomarker data to confirm incident pregnancies and new HIV infections. Due to the high sampling fraction, circumscribed geographic setting, and extremely detailed data on affiliations, behaviors, and characteristics, these data are sensitive and especially vulnerable to risks of deductive disclosure. The intent of this proposal is to make TLT data accessible to the research community while protecting respondent confidentiality by a) accelerating the cleaning of data for all aspects of this complex study, b) depositing full datasets with the NICHD-supported Data Sharing for Demographic Research (DSDR), c) establishing secure and reasonable protocols for data access, d) developing a comprehensive set of documentation guides to guide new users in leveraging this unique scientific resource to address a variety of questions, and e) building a community of data users in order to share code, problems, and solutions to enhance efficacy in data analysis. Organized around the dual aims of data archiving and documentation (Aim 1) and data promotion (Aim 2), this proposal seeks to enhance the scientific impact of the TLT study and broaden the knowledge-base underpinning research and policy with respect to the intersection of HIV and childbearing in high-prevalence and high-fertility contexts -- conditions that characterize much of sub-Saharan Africa.
NIH ExPorter
NIH ExPorter