Dr. Chas Salmen, Director of the Mfangano Community Health Field Station will speak about his experience with HIV/AIDS among the Hyperendemic Island Communities of Lake Victoria, Kenya.

Dr. Chas Salmen is the Director of the Mfangano Community Health Field Station, a collaboration between UMN Center for Global Health and Social Responsibility and a community-based organization he helped co-found, called the Organic Health Response, based out of solar-powered community center on remote Mfangano Island, Lake Victoria, in Western Kenya.

Dr. Salmen’s community-based research on Mfangano Island explores surprising relationships between ecological change, foreign species introductions, HIV epidemiology, social networks, and community resilience. In this talk, Dr. Salmen will discuss 2 longitudinal studies on Mfangano investigating a novel social network intervention to improve community-wide engagement with HIV care and treatment.