Global Health Profiles

Oby Obyerodhyambo

Oby Obyerodhyambo is a Renaissance man for the 21st century. He is a playwright, a poet, a short story writer, a radio host, an actor, a director, an art critic, workshop facilitator, and a behavior change researcher, to name just a few of his professional endeavors. But the unifying theme to his varied occupations is preventing the spread of HIV/AIDS and other infectious diseases in his native Kenya.

His current position is Senior Technical Advisor for Prevention Programs at Family Health International. Through this position, Obyerodhyambo oversees the implementation of prevention programs for a variety of infectious diseases including HIV/AIDS, TB, and malaria. He has designed and implemented numerous educational strategies including talk radio discussions, peer education, and Interactive Participatory Community Educational Theater (IPCET), with the goals of changing behavior, preventing disease, and therefore, saving lives.

Interactive Participatory Community Educational Theater involves performing a play focusing on HIV/AIDS (or any subject) in a community and actively engaging the audience members so that they become part of the performance. A facilitator in each play engages the audience members by asking them for advice regarding a scenario. For example, if the play's main characters are deciding whether or not to have unprotected sex, the actors stop performing at this point and ask the audience what they should do. A dialogue regarding safe sex practices will ensue, but the context of the performance enables audience members to speak more openly and comfortably about what are typically private, uncomfortable situations.

"We force the audience to make choices and to see that their choices have consequences. The plays help people realize that choices are difficult. The audiences make a lot of wrong choices initially, but the play's facilitator continues to challenge audience members to make wiser choices," Obyerodhyambo explains.

Family Health International's field workers stay in a community between four and six months so that they can develop trust and a rapport as well as learn about the driving issues that increase HIV transmission in the community, which will in turn, inform the content of the IPCET productions.

Obyerodhyambo has been involved with IPCET strategies since 2000. He says he prefers them because they close the communications circle with the audience. "With radio, you have to wait for feedback. Peer education works well, but the peer educators must have great skill. With theater, you have to deal with issues more immediately and personally. The theater provides the fictional frame in which people can discuss these issues more openly," he says.

His work is not just an occupation, but a vocation. "Working in the field in HIV where I come from is personal; it's not a luxury. All around me there are people -- my brothers and sisters -- who are getting HIV. I don't have the luxury of switching these issues off. I don't have the option to stop," he says.

Emory Experience

Obyerodhyambo came to Emory during spring semester 2009 as a Community Partners Leadership Fellow to work with Rollins School of Public Health professor, Dr. Kate Winskell, on analyzing scripts submitted to the Scenarios from Africa (SfA) program that she co-directs. He is the National Coordinator for SfA in Kenya and in 2005 coordinated the program's Kenyan contest. He and Winskell have been analyzing the 55,000 submitted scripts to determine how young people in Africa view different aspects of HIV/AIDS, which will help inform HIV prevention practitioners of the misconceptions and knowledge gaps that must be addressed.

Obyerodhyambo says he has enjoyed his time at Emory and in the United States, especially the interaction he has had with students and the learning opportunities available on campus and in Atlanta. However, one of his biggest disappointments was arriving a few days after the inauguration of President Barack Obama as he would have liked to have seen Obama, whose father was Kenyan, officially become president.

His Next Role

Obyerodhyambo is eager to return to Kenya to continue his disease prevention work and to begin work on another passion of his: helping to end gender-based violence in Kenya. He hopes to begin working with school-age boys starting as young as age five to discuss masculinity and the importance of being respectful of women. He plans to register an NGO through which he will conduct this work.

"We have worked a lot with women on this issue, but not with men, which may be contributing to the escalation of men's violence against women. Men may not be ready to deal with the 'new woman.' I want to work with boys to challenge the social constructs defining masculinity. I want to be able to see a group of young men in 15 years sit around a table and not call women disrespectful, perjorative names. I want to help make Kenya's young men better men who are more caring and sensitive so that they are better fathers, brothers, boyfriends, and husbands. Because if that happens, the health of men, women, and children will improve," Obyerodhyambo says.