Toward a Curriculum Innovation

This paper proposes an innovation on HIV prevention, in response to the United Nations Millennium Development Goal to combat HIV/AIDS. The curriculum innovation is through a participatory research design of life skills based education course, involving both healthy faculty tutors and young community leaders at the centre. The innovation builds onto the strengths of previous IIV prevention interventions and argues that effective life skills based education targets the individual, peers and the wider community since the same levels are crucial in HIV transmission. The innovation also recommends a rethinking of the content used to teach and learn life skill based education to prevent HIV and recommends that such content is to be co-conducted by the young community involvement. The content is to be delivered in a participatory way in order for the young community leaders to engage in critical action to prevent HIV. Because of the novelty of such an intervention, the innovation recognizes that such an approach to the design and implementation of the curriculum initiative is complex and involves careful planning, monitoring and evaluation to yield desired outcomes. In conclusion, the innovation recommends that HIV prevention can be possible even in a country such as Sierra Leone, with increasing HIV prevalence in the world.