Working in Kenya on getting water to villages, I experienced women impacted by AIDS—becoming sick, not getting treatment, and unable to talk about it.  In 2008 I heard a speaker at University Presbyterian Church say, “AIDS is the greatest humanitarian crisis of our generation; 100 years from now when people look back and say, “What did the church do?”, what will they say. “  Without a medical or public health background I moved forward, convinced we could make a tangible difference.

Vision: The vision of SCOPE (Strengthening Care Opportunities Through Partnership In Ethiopia) is to create a world where HIV/AIDS is contained through collaborative and creative partnerships between education, medicine, and religion.

Using the networking skills I gained at Microsoft, I engaged partners who shared my vision. Travelling to northern Ethiopia, where the University of Washington has an HIV/AIDS clinic, we discovered that 90% of the people are Ethiopian Orthodox Christians. The church had 2,000 rural parishes serving 2 million people in Northern Gondar, the majority of it without infrastructure.  We found that there was distrust between the medical and religious communities.  With the medical community holding the treatment for AIDS—the anti-retroviral drugs—and the church having the reach into the rural communities where most people lived, this distrust created a problem.  By bringing these groups together we could make significant progress toward our vision.  My role became project manager -- identifying partners in Ethiopia and Seattle and convincing them to help bring the medical and religious communities together.

SCOPE was formed as a partnership of the University of Washington (UW) Department of Global Health, Seattle University Presbyterian Church (UPC), the University of Gondar Medical College and the Ethiopian Orthodox Church to connect religious and medical communities so that access to and delivery of HIV/AIDS care would be improved.

Graduate students from University of Washington and University of Gondar are matched to conduct research and then monitor programs based on the research.  The partners at UPC and North Gondar Diocese identify opportunities and barriers to working with the medical community.  In turn, the medical community works with the church to expand the reach of medical services to parishioners in rural areas.

Results:

• Analysis of involvement of medical and religious communities in HIV/AIDS care was developed to find synergistic partners and avoid duplication of services. (scopehealth.org/reports)

• Voluntary campaign for HIV counseling and testing implemented in conjunction with CDC (US center for Disease Control) on the church diocese—first time testing had been done on church grounds.  EOC archbishop and priests led the way with 55 being tested and 800 additional parishioners followed.  Positive individuals were referred for care.

• Toolkit for additional testing in rural parishes in development; will be used by EOC and CDC in the future without further involvement from SCOPE.

• SCOPE fellows developing an HIV/AIDS training curriculum for religious leaders.  There are 8,000 EOC priests. Training them could significantly impact prevention, reduce stigma and increase adherence to ARTS.

The early successes and impact show that the SCOPE model can be used anywhere in the world where there is a predominance of one religion and a medical community.