2007 SOPHE Presidential Address: On Being Comfortable With Being Uncomfortable: Centering an Africanist Vision in Our Gateway to Global Health

Abstract

African identity must be central to research on African health and development. This article focuses on three primary themes for advancing a different vision for understanding health issues in Africa. The first is the need to deconstruct conventional assumptions and theories that have been used to frame public health problems and solutions in Africa. The second is to insist that identity be central to how we frame issues of health and behavior in general and in Africa in particular. The third is the importance of the notion of “social cultural infrastructure” in defining African ways of knowing to guide public health research and intervention in Africa. Finally, the metaphor of the “African gate” is used to illuminate these themes while drawing on examples from an HIV- and AIDS-related stigma research in South Africa and its implications for addressing the critical global public-health issues of today.