Dr Airhihenbuwa received his Ph.D in Public Health Education from the University of Tennessee in 1983. He also holds an MPH in He is a Professor in the Department of Biobehavioral Health at the Pennsylvania State University. He is known internationally for his expertise in culture and health. He has been recognized as the 1998 Scholar of the Year by the American Association of Health Education and the 2001 recipient of the Robert F. Allen Symbol of Hope award by the American Journal of Health Promotion. He is the author of the PEN-3 cultural model that will be used to guide the development of the intervention for this project. Based on the PEN-3 model (Airhihenbuwa, 1989, 1992, 1995, 1999) Dr. Airhihenbuwa and Dr. S. Kumanyika received funding from NIH (1993-96) to study the relations of cultural identity to food choices and exercise behavior among a random sample of African Americans, aged 40-70. Focus group interviews were conducted to examine the meanings of food practices (Airhihenbuwa, Kumanyika, Agurs, and Lowe 1995) and exercise behavior (Airhihenbuwa, Kumanyika, Agurs, Lowe, Saunders and Morssink, 1996). The result were used to developed a questionnaire combined with a cultural identity measure to develop the African American Identity Measure and its relations to food practices, exercise behavior and lifestyle of American Americans (Airhihenbuwa, Kumanyika, Ten Have, Morssink, 2000).

In 1999, Dr Airhihenbuwa lead a team of 103 researchers and practitioners (80% of them from Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean) to complete a three-year project funded by the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS). Their charge was to 1) review commonly cited social psychological theories and models in HIV/AIDS prevention; 2) evaluate their relevance to HIV/AIDS prevention in Africa, Asia, Latin American, and the Caribbean; and 3) develop a new framework (UNAIDS/Penn State 1999) for communication strategies in HIV/AIDS prevention, care, and support. The process involved five consultative meetings in Cote d'Ivoire, Thailand, The Dominican Republic, Switzerland, and the US. Two major outcomes of the framework were: 1) that HIV/AIDS prevention should be understood as the beginning of a continuum that include care and support and 2) that future approaches to HIV/AIDS prevention, care, and support should address 5 contextual domains (culture, gender, policy, socio-economic status, and spirituality) of behavior rather than focusing exclusively on individual behavior. These conclusions were even more salient for interventions developed in countries with high HIV prevalence rates like South Africa. Following the development of the framework, Dr. Airhihenbuwa, serving as a consultant for UNAIDS, lead an international team (2000 - 2001) to begin initial planning for country implementation in 4 African countries: Ethiopia, Lesotho, Ghana, and Nigeria.

Dr. Airhihenbuwa has had extensive years of collaborating with UN agencies like WHO and UNDP to develop community based programs. In 1991, he was invited by the adolescent health unit of the WHO to spend 4 months at the WHO headquarters in Geneva to develop a cultural based strategy for adolescent health issues in African countries. Subsequently in 1992, he was invited along with 14 other experts by the Regional Director of WHO Afro-region (Professor Monekosso) to provide the regional office with a blue print on strategies for addressing HIV/AIDS in Africa. One outcome of this consultation was to serve as the leader of a WHO workshop organized in Malawi in 1992 to address regional cooperation in HIV/AIDS in Eastern and Southern African countries. Later that year in Nigeria, Dr. Airhihenbuwa was invited by the Lagos-based office of the UNDP to develop a strategy for partnership among the UN agencies and USAID addressing HIV/AIDS and other health care issues in Nigeria. The goal was to work toward pooling of resources to avoid duplication of funding and identify areas of focus for each agency.

Dr. Airhihenbuwa has served as a consultant to several Non-governmental organizations to strengthen their capacity in adequately addressing cultural issues in their programs. In 1991, He was invited by Johns Hopkins University Child Survival Support program and Africare, on a USAID funded project, to lead a workshop involving over 25 NGOs that convened in Nigeria to develop their skills on planning, implementing and evaluating culturally appropriate child survival programs in Africa. Following the workshop, he was contracted by Africare to conduct a capacity building workshop on culture and health for middle managers of the ministry of health in Owerri, Nigeria. Dr. Airhihenbuwa has also worked with the late Professor Hutton Addy and Ms Ernestine Addy to research cultural bases of health seeking behavior among the people of Kwaso (a village 30 kilometers outside of Kumasi) in Ghana. Focus group interviews were conducted and analysed and results were presented to the community for action. A workshop was also organized for physicians in Kumasi on the strategies for integration of traditional and allopathic health care in Ghana.

In 2001, Dr. Airhihenbuwa was invited by the University of Durban Westville Upward Bound Program to train eight HIV/AIDS education counselors on culture and communications for HIV/AIDS. The Upward Bound Program offers opportunities for thousands of South African high school students to participate in life skills curriculum and HIV/AIDS education was one of the subjects the counselors were trained to present to the students. In 2000, Dr. Airhihenbuwa served as a visiting professor at South Africa's National School of Public Health, MEDUNSA. In this capacity he lectured a class of over 150 students enrolled in the School's winter (US summer) MPH program. Dr. Airhihenbuwa has been invited twice as a guest lecturer to the program in Public Health at the University of the Western Cape in 1995 and 1997. In 1998, he collaborated with Dr. Khalipha Bility of the University of the Western Cape to develop a video on HIV/AIDS among youth in South Africa. This video was based on focus group interviews. The video was then used to stimulate focus group discussions among youths in Cape Town and Pietersburg (now Polokwane), South Africa. This experience showed very clearly the cultural differences among the South African White youth in Cape Town and the South African Blacks in Pietersburg who participated in the focus group discussions. While the youth in Cape Town were concerned about injection drug use as mode of transmission, the youth in Pietersburg could not relate to the drug scene but rather were more concerned with issues of rape among their peers. The subcontractor whom we worked to develop this video, Akin Omotoso, is now a television star in South Africa. If the outcome of the current survey headed by Dr. Shisana were to reveal a need for a television personality to be influential in changing behavior, we hope to elicit his support in responding to such need.

Dr. Airhihenbuwa is a co-Principal investigator on a grant (2000-2003) from the Fogarty International Center of the National Institutes of Health established The Pennsylvania State University Minority International Research and Training (PSU-MIRT; Gary King, Ph.D. as PI) program that is in its third year. The grant has supported 25 students and three faculty members during the first two summers at sites in Paris, France, Geneva Switzerland, Dakar, Senegal, Cape Town and Pretoria, South Africa. Dr. Airhihenbuwa directs the site in South Africa, which focusing on HIV and AIDS research training. Although South Africa is one of 4 country sites, 10 of the 25 students trained thus far were trained in South Africa. One graduate student, assigned to the UNAIDS Inter-country Team Office in Pretoria for summer, 2001 is basing his doctoral dissertation on a UNAIDS-sponsored initiative in Mpumalanga, South Africa. Eight of the 15 students accepted for PSU/MIRT for summer, 2002 will be based at two research sites in Cape Town South Africa. Five of the 8 students will be training under the leadership of Dr. Olive Shisana, the Co-PI of the proposed project. These students will be assigned to work on South Africa's first population-based HIV/AIDS behavioral risks, sero-status, and mass media impact survey. Dr. Shisana is the PI on this survey project and Dr. Airhihenbuwa serves as a project consultant. The results of this project will, to a large extent, inform the demonstration projects that will be developed and implemented by the trainees.

Dr. Airhihenbuwa is the Principal Investigator on a new five year grant (2003-2008) from NIMH, in collaboration with Dr. Olive Shisana (co-PI) of HSRC in Cape Town South Africa. The grant's objective is to strengthen the capacity of 10 faculty members and 40 students (over 5 years) in the use of a cultural model (PEN-3) developed by Dr. Airhihenbuwa to investigate the social cultural influence of HIV stigma in South Africa.

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