Healthright Frontline Health Workers: Salim Furaha, Kenya - a podcast by NYU School of Global Public Health

HealthRight and I AM GPH have partnered to bring you this 4-part podcast series profiling four different Frontline health workers (FHWs) and their work in four different countries.

The Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) has identified men-who-have-sex-with-men (MSM) and sex workers as priority populations for HIV prevention, care and treatment services given their heightened risk. Pre-exposure prophylaxis or PrEP as it's more commonly known, is a medicine that prevents HIV infection and holds significant potential for reducing HIV incidence, particularly among groups that are at high risk of infection. In this episode we speak with Salim Furaha, who is a sex worker and peer educator in eastern Kenya, working on a HealthRight-sponsored PrEP project in order to assess its impact on the local sex worker community. Salim discusses his view from the front lines of the HIV response: how and why he became a peer educator, what a peer educator does, and why PrEP is an important HIV prevention tool in his community.

As a global health NGO focused on health system strengthening for marginalized populations, much of HealthRight's work is devoted to building the capacity of FHWs to better meet the needs of the communities they serve. These are some of those stories. This podcast series is hosted by Dr. Peter Navario, Executive Director of HealthRight and Clinical Associate Professor at NYU's College of Global Public Health.

Frontline health workers play an essential role in the prevention, identification and response to ill-health globally. For marginalized communities in particular, FHWs are the only link between them and the health system. Investment in FHWs has been shown to be a highly cost-effective way to ensure healthier, safer communities around the world.

For more information about HealthRight and its programs please visit: www.healthright.org or visit them on Twitter or Instagram.

To learn more about the NYU College of Global Public Health, and how our innovative programs are training the next generation of public health leaders, visit publichealth.nyu.edu.