HIV/AIDS and alcohol risks in Cambodia: Confronting challenges and policy-making through research-guided actions

This chapter describes how researchers, practitioners and interns from social sciences, medicine, public health and global development have collaborated in Cambodia with local health providers, employers, NGOs, grass-roots stakeholders and volunteers to confront HIV/AIDS and the co-risk of alcohol overuse. Results from research-driven interventions engage the local community and also seek to effect national and global policy and practices. The grass-roots NGO SiRCHESI (Siem Reap Citizens for Health, Educational and Social Issues) uses local health workers and peer educators to provide interventions and evaluate their impact. These health-promotion interventions involve contacts with local partners, global business headquarters, government policy-makers and relevant decision-makers.Strategies are discussed for changing policy or practices by directly “making data matter” or “indirectly”, by providing the data to others (e.g., press, unions, international organizations) whose mandates involve greater “activism” than permitted Cambodian NGOs.