“Illness Narratives without the Illness: Biomedical HIV Prevention Narratives from East Africa”.

Johnson-Peretz J, Atwine F, Kamya M, et al. (2024). Journal of Medical Humanities.

"Most of my friends are older than me; they guide me on how teenage life is. Therefore, one of them married a lady who was HIV-positive, but he did not know. Initially, they were using condoms until they went for the test and they found out that the lady was HIV-positive and he was HIV-negative. So the provider advised him to take PrEP then he enrolled to it. He is the one who told me how effective the drug is." (Quest genre, seeking advice. 19 y.o. male, Kenya)

Synopsis: We present seven narratives concerned with biomedical illness prevention, gathered through semi-structured, in-depth interviews during a dynamic choice HIV prevention intervention study, thereby complicating the notion of an illness narrative by focusing on narratives about preventive care while connecting them to contextual African narrative genres. 
Key Findings: Our participants deployed several identifiable patterns in their illness-prevention narratives, each of which relates to contemporary African narrative genres such as the trickster, the quest, and the tragic hero. The narratives describe social roles and relationships and how they influence people navigating prevention.
Recommendations: Illness prevention narratives give public health researchers scripts which resonate with the moral and cultural sensibilities of a given population. With the introduction of HIV prevention options like PrEP, the uptake of cervical and anal cancer prevention through HPV vaccines, and the increased visibility of anti-vaccination groups, we argue it is time for public health officials to discuss the narratives and counter-narratives which concern not only risk but also the prevention and elimination of suffering and disease.