Professor Linda Richter (PhD) is a Distinguished Research Fellow at the Human Sciences Research Council in South Africa. She is an Honorary Professor in Psychology and an elected Fellow of the University of KwaZulu-Natal; an Honorary Professor in the Department of Paediatrics and Child Health at the University of the Witwatersrand, and a Research Associate in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Oxford (UK). From 2003-2006, she was a Visiting Researcher at the University of Melbourne, and from 2007-2010 a Visiting Scholar at Harvard University (USA). Currently, she is on contract from the Human Sciences Research Council to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria in Geneva, as Senior Specialist (Health of Vulnerable Children) for half of her time.
Linda has conducted both basic and policy research in the fields of child, youth and family development as applied to health, education, welfare and social development, and has published more than 250 papers and chapters in the fields of child, adolescent and family development, infant and child assessment, protein-energy malnutrition, street and working children, and the effects of HIV/AIDS on children and families, including HIV prevention among young people. Her papers have appeared in, amongst others, Science, the Lancet, and the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). She is the author of several books and monographs - Mandela?s Children: Growing up in Post-Apartheid South Africa (Routledge, 2001), The Sexual Abuse of Young Children in Southern Africa (HSRC Press, 2004), The Importance of Caregiver-Child Interactions for the Survival and Healthy Development of Young Children (World Health Organization, 2004), Family and Community Interventions for Children Affected by HIV/AIDS (HSRC Press, 2004), Baba: Men and Fatherhood in South Africa (HSRC Press, 2006), Where the Heart Is: Meeting the Psychosocial Needs of Young Children in the Context of HIV/AIDS (Bernard van Leer Foundation, 2006), Building Resilience A Rights-Based Approach to Children and HIV/AIDS in Africa (Save the Children Sweden, 2006). She is working on two new books - Helping Disadvantaged Children in a World of Poverty, War and AIDS with her colleague Karsten Hundeide and an edited volume entitled Mandela?s Children: Birth to Twenty ? The Primary School Years.
Linda is on the Editorial Board of the eight journals: African Journal of AIDS Research, Journal of Child and Adolescent Mental Health, Vulnerable Children and Youth Studies, Perspectives in Education, Journal of Child Health Care, Children?s Geographies, Ethnicity and Health and she is the Regional Editor for Africa of International Perspectives in Psychology: Research, Practice, Consultation. From 1992 to 1997, she was the Editor of the South African Journal of Psychology, in 2005 she was the Guest Editor of a Special Issue of Africa Insight on Youth in Africa and in 2010 the Guest Editor of a Special Issue of the Journal of the International AIDS Society (JAIDS) on Family-Centred Approaches to Children Affected by HIV and AIDS.
Linda is the Principal Investigator of several large-scale, long-term collaborative projects, including Birth to Twenty, a Wellcome Trust-funded birth cohort study of 3 273 children with follow up to age 21 years; the Vulindela site of Project Accept, a NIMH-funded randomised community trial to change community norms and thereby reduce recent HIV infection; Masihambisani Mentor Mothers, a NIMH-funded randomised clinic study aimed at improving PMTCT outcomes through community support; the Wellbeing of South African Children Affected by HIV/AIDS and Poverty study, a NICHD-funded quasi-experimental study of the impact of social grants and services on children and families; and Home-Based Palliative Care for Children, a Diana Princess of Wales Memorial Fund supported study to develop and evaluate training materials to improve the care of chronically ill children in southern Africa. Linda was the co-chair of Learning Group 1: Strengthening Families in the Joint Learning Initiative on Children and AIDS (JLICA), and was recently on the evaluation team to review PEPFAR?s programmes for orphans and vulnerable children in 26 countries.
Linda has devised a number of innovative intervention programmes and has advised local and international agencies on the design, implementation and evaluation of interventions for children, youth and families. These include malnourished children and their caregivers, street children, children in situations of conflict and war, support for vulnerable children provided by youth, promoting men?s care and protection of children, social protection and human rights, and palliative care for sick children in the context of the HIV/AIDS pandemic.
In 2008 Linda gave the first plenary presentation on Children and AIDS at the International AIDS Conference in Mexico City. She chairs and serves on several national, regional and international bodies. She is currently serving on the UNAIDS Task Force on Women, Girls, Gender Equality and HIV and is a member of the Coalition of Children Affected by AIDS (CCABA), the Inter-Agency Task Team (IATT) and the Regional Inter-Agency Task Team (RIATT) on Children and AIDS, the Section 5 Committee of the South African Human Rights Commission, and the Technical Experts Team for the SAfAIDS/SADC Project on Harmonization of Paediatric HIV, TB and Malaria. |
