Research capacity building and collaboration between South African and American partners: the adaptation of an intervention model for HIV/AIDS prevention in corrections research.

This article examines a partnership between researchers from the United States who are involved in corrections health issues and scientists from South Africa who conduct prison health research, a previously underresearched area in South Africa. The article discusses some of the challenges as well as opportunities for knowledge and skills exchange via capacity building and collaboration strategies. Through historical and contemporary perspectives, it also discusses barriers and benefits of collaboration when forging links between researchers from developed and less developed nations. A focus on conducting public health research in South Africa, and on HIV/AIDS studies in particular, is placed within the context of the 2001 document of the Council on Health Research for Development. The South African prison health study represents a collaborative between the South African National Health Promotion Research and Development Group of the Medical Research Council, the South African Department of Correctional Services, and Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. The article illuminates the process of adapting a model for a postapartheid prison study from one designed for use in the American correctional system.