Amelia Mfiki, HPTN 083 Community Working Group member, is the community liaison officer at the Groot Schuur HIV CRS in Cape Town, South Africa. With a background in social work, she has successfully established the LGBTI forum in the Western Cape. The forum aims to empower and educate LGBTQI+ populations to enhance their health and well-being. She is one of the founders of Ubomi Bethu, an organization seeking to inform communities about HIV-related issues through treatment literacy and facility demand creation. Amelia was also recently appointed provincial chairperson of the Provincial Council on AIDS and TB.

What attracted you to a career in HIV prevention research? 

My involvement with HIV prevention and treatment advocacy began at 16 when I was a peer advisor in high school. The focus back then was on the ABC methods ("A" for abstaining, "B" for being faithful, and "C" for using condoms). I eventually became involved in community engagement with local authorities and health ministers. For me, seeing how the community responds to the HIV pandemic is exciting. With all the preventative methods and treatment programs put in place, we have seen a significant shift in the number of people on ART, and PrEP uptake is slowly increasing.

What aspect of your role do you enjoy the most? 

Connecting communities is my strength in many ways. It is a train-the-trainer engagement. It's the space where I tell the community stakeholders about my work in this space, which makes reaching their constituencies on a broader scale easy. This is the space where I feel I am crucially needed in this space for the benefit of the HIV response in South Africa, and most of the programs I work with benefit communities directly.

What would you say most motivates you to do what you do? 

People now understand the research concept, which becomes more exciting when you explain how HIV works in the immune system, why we should participate in the research, and what benefits it offers. 

What advice do you have for new HPTN members? 

Passion is the big ask from us as community members, getting to know who is part of your community and how best we can support each other. Look for programs that speak to disadvantaged communities. 

What volunteering or passion projects do you do outside of work? 

I co-founded an organization called Ubomi Be (Our Lives). We are an advocacy organization focusing on HIV prevention and treatment programs. We do most of our work with young adolescents in South Africa and partner with George Mason University in Virginia. The organization is doing treatment literacy in the Gugulethu clinic and creating demand for HIV testing and PrEP in the Western and Eastern Cape.