2023 Diversity Award

Selected for the 2023 Diversity Award is Khamisi Musanje (he was nominated by Rosco Kasujja)

While ACT and other related mindfulness and acceptance based therapies have enjoyed a great breakthrough in the developed world, the developing world has lagged behind on this experience. An automatic copy and paste approach would quicken the spread of such therapies in the developing contexts (where they are needed most), however, the realization that contexts affect the effectiveness of psychotherapy puts a caution on such a simplistic approach. Besides, there is strong evidence that most psychotherapies coming from the developed West, fall short of expectations when used in completely different settings.

My colleagues and I, out of passion for extending the use of ACT to a developing context (Uganda), embarked on a journey to culturally translate ACT materials for use with adolescents living with HIV in Uganda. We engaged local mental health experts and others stakeholders involved in HIV care services to produce materials with cultural relevance. We further tested acceptability of the adapted materials among adolescents and health care providers in Uganda (materials were perceived to be acceptable, relevant and usable). We are currently evaluating effectiveness of the adapted materials in supporting the mental health of adolescents in a low resource context (Uganda) through a randomized trial.

I have disseminated the adaptation process and results on social validity of the material in two scientific publications; PLOS Global health journal; https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pgph.0001605, and the Journal of Contextual Behavioral Sciences; https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcbs.2023.07.002. I have presented the work in the 16th and 17th Joint Annual Scientific and Health Conferences-JASHC 2022 and 2023 organized in Uganda and presented at the Association of Contextual Behavioral Scientists world conference in Nicosia- Cyprus. Besides, I have held stakeholder feedback workshops with both healthcare providers and adolescents and also held one online meeting with the Ministry of Health in Uganda to kick start conversations regarding inclusion of mindfulness and acceptance strategies into standard of care services offered to adolescents living with HIV in Uganda.