A Mojola
Biographic Data
| ID | 18369 |
|---|---|
| NAME | A Mojola |
| GIVEN NAMES | A |
| FAMILY NAME | Mojola |
| SIGNATURE | MOJOLA A |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Colorado Boulder |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-2610-2625 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 32 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 140 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 32 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2007 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
It's about time
This study explores temporal patterns in racial/ethnic and socioeconomic disparities in health among US women. While prior research has shown that socioeconomic gains often yield smaller health benefits for racially marginalized populations, less is known about how these patterns vary across historical periods, age groups, and birth cohorts. Using data from the National Health Interview Survey 1978–2018 ( N = 1,416,652), we examine how education,…
The Covid‐19 Pandemic and the Social Mathematics of Life and Death
Unpacking the black box of latent class analysis using qualitative life history interviews
BACKGROUNDSexual behaviors are determined by present-day factors and past/future considerations.Previous work utilizing latent class analysis on a population-based cross-sectional survey of rural South Africans aged 15-plus showed how sexual behaviors cluster in distinct population subgroups (Class 1: Single with consistent protective behaviors; Class 2: Risky behaviors; Class 3: In union with lack of protective behaviors) and their associations …
Mortality variability and differentials by age and causes of death in rural South Africa, 1994–2018
INTRODUCTION: Understanding mortality variability by age and cause is critical to identifying intervention and prevention actions to support disadvantaged populations. We assessed mortality changes in two rural South African populations over 25 years covering pre-AIDS and peak AIDS epidemic and subsequent antiretroviral therapy (ART) availability. METHODS: Using population surveillance data from the Agincourt Health and Socio-Demographic Surveill…
Understanding Household Dynamics From the Ground Up
Investigations into household structure in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) provide important insight into how families manage domestic life in response to resource allocation and caregiving needs during periods of rapid sociopolitical and health-related challenges. Recent evidence on household structure in many LMICs contrasts with long-standing viewpoints of worldwide convergence to a Western nuclearized household model. Here, we adopt …
Biomedical bargains
Antiretroviral therapy and aging as resources for managing and resisting HIV-related stigma in rural South Africa
The widespread roll-out of antiretroviral therapy (ART) in Africa has contributed to a large population of adults aging with HIV. However, little is known about how HIV-related stigma interacts with aging in the ART era. This study uses in-depth interviews with middle-aged and older South Africans living with HIV to explore stigma-related experiences and response strategies. Participants describe a persistence of stigma which requires the deploym…
Twin epidemics
Our results indicate that HIV and elevated blood pressure are acting as separate, non-interacting epidemics affecting high proportions of the older adult population. PLWH with unsuppressed viral load were at higher mortality risk compared to those uninfected. Systolic blood pressure was a mortality risk factor independent of HIV status. As antiretroviral therapy becomes more widespread, further longitudinal follow-up is needed to understand how t…
The Meaning of Health in Rural South Africa
This article examines the meaning of health among middle-aged and older adults in a rural South African setting, where 72 percent of adults aged 40 and over are living with a major chronic condition, and 81 percent report good or very good health. We draw on a unique mixed-methods dataset that includes a population-based survey with disease biomarkers (hypertension, diabetes, HIV), self-assessments of health including self-rated health, functiona…
Making Sense of Troubled Livelihoods
When men and women cannot attain idealized gendered forms of economic provision and dependence, how do they make sense of this perceived failure? In this article, we posit that poor health narratives serve as a gendered tool to make sense of inadequate livelihoods, even when that inadequacy is attributable to structural conditions. We draw on survey and life-history interview data from middle-aged and older rural South Africans. The survey data s…
Has the relationship between wealth and HIV risk in Sub-Saharan Africa changed over time? A temporal, gendered and hierarchical analysis
This study examines the relationship between wealth and HIV infection in Sub-Saharan Africa to determine whether and how this relationship has varied over time, within and across countries, by gender, and urban environment. The analysis draws on DHS and AIS data from 27 Sub-Saharan African countries, which spanned the 14 years between 2003 and 2016. We first use logistic regression analyses to assess the relationship between individual wealth, HI…
From “Secret” to “Sensitive Issue”
Particularly as the epidemic ages in South Africa and globally, tracing changes in older persons' views on disclosure is an important step in developing messaging that could enhance treatment as prevention and ART adherence
A Nowadays Disease
Why do some people adapt successfully to change while others do not? We examine this question in the context of a severe HIV/AIDS epidemic in South Africa, where adapting (or not) to social change has borne life and death consequences. Applying an age-period-cohort lens to the analysis of qualitative life history interviews among middle-aged and older adults, we consider the role of the life course and gendered sexuality in informing Africans' st…
The end of Aids? HIV and the new landscape of illness in rural South Africa
The global HIV/AIDS scientific community has begun to hail the dawn of 'the End of AIDS' with widespread anti-retroviral therapy (ART) and dramatic declines in AIDS-related mortality. Drawing on community focus groups and in-depth individual interviews conducted in rural South Africa, we examine the complex unfolding of the end of AIDS in a hard-hit setting. We find that while widespread ART has led to declines in AIDS-related deaths, stigma pers…
Clusters of HIV Risk and Protective Sexual Behaviors in Agincourt, Rural South Africa
Sometimes it is not about men’
In this paper, we examine a prominent interpretation of HIV risk in a rural South African setting experiencing a severe HIV epidemic well into older ages: the discourse of caregiving HIV transmission. By caregiving transmission, we refer to HIV infection resulting from caring for family members who are living with HIV and may be sick with AIDS-related illnesses. We draw on individual life history and community focus group interviews with men and …
Sexual behavior and HIV risk across the life course in rural South Africa
There is limited information about sexual behavior among older Africans, which is problematic given high HIV rates among older adults. We use a population-based survey among people aged 15-80+ to examine the prevalence of sexual risk and protective behaviors in the context of a severe HIV epidemic. We focus on variation across the life course, gender and HIV serostatus to compare the similarities and differences of young, middle aged, and older a…
Taking care’ in the age of Aids
Older adults have been largely overlooked in community studies of HIV in highly endemic African countries. In our rural study site in Mpumalanga Province, South Africa, HIV prevalence among those aged 50 and older is 16.5%, suggesting that older adults are at risk of both acquiring and transmitting HIV. This paper utilises community-based focus-group interviews with older rural South African men and women to better understand the normative enviro…
How to “Live a Good Life”
We conclude with recommendations to increase HIV testing uptake among older adults including home testing, couples testing, and HIV testing concurrently with noncommunicable diseases
Best Laid Plans
Making Sense of Marriage
Objective:The objective of this study was to examine how young people in Nairobi, Kenya, are making sense of marriage, both in terms of their own lives and its social significance.Background:In many sub-Saharan African communities, marriage has been a fundamental marker of the transition to adulthood. However, union formation is changing, particularly in urban areas-partnering is occurring later and nonmarital cohabitation is increasingly common …
Aids in Africa
Many African countries are still a long way from being able to sustain their own prevention and treatment efforts, and continued momentum is dependent on global funding and support
Behaving well’
Few studies of the transition to adulthood in Africa analyse young people's own definitions of the events that confer adult status, and how adulthood is actually attained. This paper examines the experience of transitioning to womanhood in rural Mpumalanga Province, South Africa, drawing on interviews with 18 women aged 18-39. Three primary experiences characterised this transition: puberty and emerging body awareness, spending time with boys, an…
Material girls and Material love
In this paper, I use qualitative data to explore the practices engaged in by Kenyan schoolgirls to participate in modern consuming womanhood, as well as the contradictory implications of these practices for thinking about globalized mediated femininities and their enactment in resource-poor settings. The paper examines the centrality of consumption to valued modern femininity among young women around the world, as well as the structural reality o…
HIV after 40 in rural South Africa
Fishing in dangerous waters
Sexual Behavior in China
Dramatic political, economic, and social changes in China over the past several decades have been accompanied by much discussion in popular media and among academics of a fundamental transformation in Chinese sexual behavior. Several studies have examined current Chinese sexual behavior but have been limited to particular provinces or cities and have been based on non-random samples. The potential threat of a generalized HIV epidemic in China hig…
STD and HIV Risk Factors Among U.S. Young Adults
Taking account of multiple minority identities should be an important part of future research and intervention efforts for STD and HIV prevention
Making Sense of Marriage
Objective:The objective of this study was to examine how young people in Nairobi, Kenya, are making sense of marriage, both in terms of their own lives and its social significance.Background:In many sub-Saharan African communities, marriage has been a fundamental marker of the transition to adulthood. However, union formation is changing, particularly in urban areas-partnering is occurring later and nonmarital cohabitation is increasingly common …
HIV after 40 in rural South Africa
Growing Up at the “Margins”
We explore the concerns, challenges, aspirations, and expectations of sub-Saharan African youth, and investigate how these youth cope with neighborhood constraints to aspiration achievement. We draw on cross-sectional survey data from 4033 12-22 year olds (50.3% males) from two Kenyan urban slums and subsequent in-depth interviews conducted with a subset of 75 youth when they were 13-24 years old (45.3% male). We observe that despite the challeng…
The Meaning of Health in Rural South Africa
This article examines the meaning of health among middle-aged and older adults in a rural South African setting, where 72 percent of adults aged 40 and over are living with a major chronic condition, and 81 percent report good or very good health. We draw on a unique mixed-methods dataset that includes a population-based survey with disease biomarkers (hypertension, diabetes, HIV), self-assessments of health including self-rated health, functiona…
A Nowadays Disease
Why do some people adapt successfully to change while others do not? We examine this question in the context of a severe HIV/AIDS epidemic in South Africa, where adapting (or not) to social change has borne life and death consequences. Applying an age-period-cohort lens to the analysis of qualitative life history interviews among middle-aged and older adults, we consider the role of the life course and gendered sexuality in informing Africans' st…
Best Laid Plans
Multiple Transitions and HIV Risk among Orphaned Kenyan Schoolgirls
Why are orphaned girls at particular risk of acquiring HIV infection? Using a transition‐to‐adulthood framework, this study employs qualitative data from Nyanza Province, Kenya, to explore pathways to HIV risk among orphaned and nonorphaned high‐school girls. It shows how simultaneous processes such as leaving their parental home, negotiating financial access, and relationship transitions interact to produce disproportionate risk for orphaned gir…
Material girls and Material love
In this paper, I use qualitative data to explore the practices engaged in by Kenyan schoolgirls to participate in modern consuming womanhood, as well as the contradictory implications of these practices for thinking about globalized mediated femininities and their enactment in resource-poor settings. The paper examines the centrality of consumption to valued modern femininity among young women around the world, as well as the structural reality o…
How to “Live a Good Life”
We conclude with recommendations to increase HIV testing uptake among older adults including home testing, couples testing, and HIV testing concurrently with noncommunicable diseases
Biomedical bargains
Making Sense of Troubled Livelihoods
When men and women cannot attain idealized gendered forms of economic provision and dependence, how do they make sense of this perceived failure? In this article, we posit that poor health narratives serve as a gendered tool to make sense of inadequate livelihoods, even when that inadequacy is attributable to structural conditions. We draw on survey and life-history interview data from middle-aged and older rural South Africans. The survey data s…
Unpacking the black box of latent class analysis using qualitative life history interviews
BACKGROUNDSexual behaviors are determined by present-day factors and past/future considerations.Previous work utilizing latent class analysis on a population-based cross-sectional survey of rural South Africans aged 15-plus showed how sexual behaviors cluster in distinct population subgroups (Class 1: Single with consistent protective behaviors; Class 2: Risky behaviors; Class 3: In union with lack of protective behaviors) and their associations …
Understanding Household Dynamics From the Ground Up
Investigations into household structure in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) provide important insight into how families manage domestic life in response to resource allocation and caregiving needs during periods of rapid sociopolitical and health-related challenges. Recent evidence on household structure in many LMICs contrasts with long-standing viewpoints of worldwide convergence to a Western nuclearized household model. Here, we adopt …
Clusters of HIV Risk and Protective Sexual Behaviors in Agincourt, Rural South Africa
Sexual Behavior in China
Dramatic political, economic, and social changes in China over the past several decades have been accompanied by much discussion in popular media and among academics of a fundamental transformation in Chinese sexual behavior. Several studies have examined current Chinese sexual behavior but have been limited to particular provinces or cities and have been based on non-random samples. The potential threat of a generalized HIV epidemic in China hig…
Multiple Transitions and HIV Risk among Orphaned Kenyan Schoolgirls
Why are orphaned girls at particular risk of acquiring HIV infection? Using a transition‐to‐adulthood framework, this study employs qualitative data from Nyanza Province, Kenya, to explore pathways to HIV risk among orphaned and nonorphaned high‐school girls. It shows how simultaneous processes such as leaving their parental home, negotiating financial access, and relationship transitions interact to produce disproportionate risk for orphaned gir…
Fishing in dangerous waters
STD and HIV Risk Factors Among U.S. Young Adults
Taking account of multiple minority identities should be an important part of future research and intervention efforts for STD and HIV prevention
Growing Up at the “Margins”
We explore the concerns, challenges, aspirations, and expectations of sub-Saharan African youth, and investigate how these youth cope with neighborhood constraints to aspiration achievement. We draw on cross-sectional survey data from 4033 12-22 year olds (50.3% males) from two Kenyan urban slums and subsequent in-depth interviews conducted with a subset of 75 youth when they were 13-24 years old (45.3% male). We observe that despite the challeng…
"Love, Money, and HIV"
Drawing on a rich variety of interviews and ethnographic and survey data from her native country of Kenya, Sanyu Mojola examines how young African women, who suffer disproportionate rates of HIV infection compared to young African men, navigate their relationships, schooling, employment, and financial access in the context of a devastating HIV epidemic, economic inequality, and a changing ecological environment. Writing from a unique outsider-ins…
Providing Women, Kept Men
This paper draws on ethnographic and interview based fieldwork to explore accounts of intimate relationships between widowed women and poor young men that emerged in the wake of economic crisis and a devastating HIV epidemic among the Luo ethnic group in Western Kenya. I show how the cooptation of widow inheritance practices in the wake of an overwhelming number of widows as well as economic crisis resulted in widows becoming providing women and …
Material girls and Material love
In this paper, I use qualitative data to explore the practices engaged in by Kenyan schoolgirls to participate in modern consuming womanhood, as well as the contradictory implications of these practices for thinking about globalized mediated femininities and their enactment in resource-poor settings. The paper examines the centrality of consumption to valued modern femininity among young women around the world, as well as the structural reality o…
HIV after 40 in rural South Africa
Aids in Africa
Many African countries are still a long way from being able to sustain their own prevention and treatment efforts, and continued momentum is dependent on global funding and support
Behaving well’
Few studies of the transition to adulthood in Africa analyse young people's own definitions of the events that confer adult status, and how adulthood is actually attained. This paper examines the experience of transitioning to womanhood in rural Mpumalanga Province, South Africa, drawing on interviews with 18 women aged 18-39. Three primary experiences characterised this transition: puberty and emerging body awareness, spending time with boys, an…
Sexual behavior and HIV risk across the life course in rural South Africa
There is limited information about sexual behavior among older Africans, which is problematic given high HIV rates among older adults. We use a population-based survey among people aged 15-80+ to examine the prevalence of sexual risk and protective behaviors in the context of a severe HIV epidemic. We focus on variation across the life course, gender and HIV serostatus to compare the similarities and differences of young, middle aged, and older a…
Taking care’ in the age of Aids
Older adults have been largely overlooked in community studies of HIV in highly endemic African countries. In our rural study site in Mpumalanga Province, South Africa, HIV prevalence among those aged 50 and older is 16.5%, suggesting that older adults are at risk of both acquiring and transmitting HIV. This paper utilises community-based focus-group interviews with older rural South African men and women to better understand the normative enviro…
How to “Live a Good Life”
We conclude with recommendations to increase HIV testing uptake among older adults including home testing, couples testing, and HIV testing concurrently with noncommunicable diseases
Best Laid Plans
Making Sense of Marriage
Objective:The objective of this study was to examine how young people in Nairobi, Kenya, are making sense of marriage, both in terms of their own lives and its social significance.Background:In many sub-Saharan African communities, marriage has been a fundamental marker of the transition to adulthood. However, union formation is changing, particularly in urban areas-partnering is occurring later and nonmarital cohabitation is increasingly common …
Sometimes it is not about men’
In this paper, we examine a prominent interpretation of HIV risk in a rural South African setting experiencing a severe HIV epidemic well into older ages: the discourse of caregiving HIV transmission. By caregiving transmission, we refer to HIV infection resulting from caring for family members who are living with HIV and may be sick with AIDS-related illnesses. We draw on individual life history and community focus group interviews with men and …
The end of Aids? HIV and the new landscape of illness in rural South Africa
The global HIV/AIDS scientific community has begun to hail the dawn of 'the End of AIDS' with widespread anti-retroviral therapy (ART) and dramatic declines in AIDS-related mortality. Drawing on community focus groups and in-depth individual interviews conducted in rural South Africa, we examine the complex unfolding of the end of AIDS in a hard-hit setting. We find that while widespread ART has led to declines in AIDS-related deaths, stigma pers…
Clusters of HIV Risk and Protective Sexual Behaviors in Agincourt, Rural South Africa
Has the relationship between wealth and HIV risk in Sub-Saharan Africa changed over time? A temporal, gendered and hierarchical analysis
This study examines the relationship between wealth and HIV infection in Sub-Saharan Africa to determine whether and how this relationship has varied over time, within and across countries, by gender, and urban environment. The analysis draws on DHS and AIS data from 27 Sub-Saharan African countries, which spanned the 14 years between 2003 and 2016. We first use logistic regression analyses to assess the relationship between individual wealth, HI…
From “Secret” to “Sensitive Issue”
Particularly as the epidemic ages in South Africa and globally, tracing changes in older persons' views on disclosure is an important step in developing messaging that could enhance treatment as prevention and ART adherence
A Nowadays Disease
Why do some people adapt successfully to change while others do not? We examine this question in the context of a severe HIV/AIDS epidemic in South Africa, where adapting (or not) to social change has borne life and death consequences. Applying an age-period-cohort lens to the analysis of qualitative life history interviews among middle-aged and older adults, we consider the role of the life course and gendered sexuality in informing Africans' st…
Antiretroviral therapy and aging as resources for managing and resisting HIV-related stigma in rural South Africa
The widespread roll-out of antiretroviral therapy (ART) in Africa has contributed to a large population of adults aging with HIV. However, little is known about how HIV-related stigma interacts with aging in the ART era. This study uses in-depth interviews with middle-aged and older South Africans living with HIV to explore stigma-related experiences and response strategies. Participants describe a persistence of stigma which requires the deploym…
Twin epidemics
Our results indicate that HIV and elevated blood pressure are acting as separate, non-interacting epidemics affecting high proportions of the older adult population. PLWH with unsuppressed viral load were at higher mortality risk compared to those uninfected. Systolic blood pressure was a mortality risk factor independent of HIV status. As antiretroviral therapy becomes more widespread, further longitudinal follow-up is needed to understand how t…
The Meaning of Health in Rural South Africa
This article examines the meaning of health among middle-aged and older adults in a rural South African setting, where 72 percent of adults aged 40 and over are living with a major chronic condition, and 81 percent report good or very good health. We draw on a unique mixed-methods dataset that includes a population-based survey with disease biomarkers (hypertension, diabetes, HIV), self-assessments of health including self-rated health, functiona…
Sociology (23 works) · Medicine (21 works) · Psychology (18 works) · Adolescent Sexual and Reproductive Health (17 works) · Population (17 works) · Demography (15 works) · HIV/AIDS Research and Interventions (15 works) · Gerontology (12 works) · Gender Studies (11 works) · Geography (11 works)