Mazowe District · Zimbabwe
TSIME is a research study integrating sexual and reproductive health services into clinic-based HIV care, built alongside patients, nurses and community leaders in Mazowe District using Experience-Based Co-Design.
The study
Across Zimbabwe, people living with HIV often manage their care and their sexual and reproductive health through separate visits, separate queues and separate conversations. TSIME asks a simple question: what would it look like if clinics offered both, together, in a way that patients and staff actually helped design?
Formally titled “Integrating Sexual and Reproductive Health into Clinic-Based HIV Services in Zimbabwe: An Experience-Based Co-Design Approach,” the study is based in Mazowe District, Mashonaland Central, and is being carried out by the Biomedical Research and Training Institute (BRTI) / The Health Research Unit Zimbabwe, in partnership with the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM).
Read the full storyWhy Mazowe
Mazowe is a largely rural district of roughly 35 wards where HIV care and sexual and reproductive health services have historically run on separate tracks. It gives the study a realistic, resource-constrained setting for testing whether an integrated model can actually work — and be sustained — outside of a specialist urban clinic.
Methodology
EBCD is a recognised approach — set within the Medical Research Council and National Institute for Health Research framework for developing and evaluating complex interventions — that treats patients and staff as equal partners in redesigning a service, rather than subjects of it.
Stakeholder meetings with district health leaders, traditional and church leaders, and community members establish trust and shared purpose before any service redesign begins.
Patients living with HIV and the nurses and clinicians who care for them are interviewed about their real experiences of seeking SRH care alongside HIV treatment — the friction points, the workarounds, the moments that worked.
Findings are shared back with patients and staff together, who jointly identify the priority touchpoints worth redesigning first.
Joint working groups of patients and providers design practical changes to how integrated SRH and HIV services are delivered at clinic level.
The co-designed package is piloted as a proof of concept for what a larger-scale, integrated model of care could look like across Zimbabwe.
Who's behind it
Registered Nurse and Clinical Nurse Educator specialising in primary and acute care, pursuing her PhD at LSHTM through the CREATE PhD Programme, and leading TSIME on the ground in Mazowe.
Coordinates day-to-day study operations in Mazowe District — from stakeholder engagement to fieldwork logistics — keeping the co-design process moving on the ground.
Funding & partnership
TSIME is supported through a Wellcome Trust–funded fellowship, delivered via the CREATE PhD Programme — the Africa Health Research Training Programme run through the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine — and hosted in Zimbabwe by the Biomedical Research and Training Institute.
Whether you're a stakeholder in Mazowe, a fellow researcher, or simply curious about integrated HIV and SRH care — we'd like to hear from you.