Senior Fellow

Ken Morrison has cultivated a 30+ year career as a thought leader in health policy and programming, working globally to reduce stigma and discrimination in HIV service delivery and conceptualizing the role of social capital in building resilience for vulnerable groups.

 

Most recently, Ken and colleagues have pioneered a state-level HIV/STI strategic planning model for combination prevention thus far applied in 12 of 32 Mexican states. The model involves convening a critical mass of state-level stakeholders including representatives of key populations, service providers, state government, governance and security sectors and guiding them through a 10-month process of diagnostic, strategic planning and piloting elements of the strategic plan, with support for the multi-sectoral collective to convince government agencies to fund and implement the strategic plan. The project has worked to improve integral health services for trans persons and other key populations.

 

Building on his earlier work to develop a conceptual model on HIV/AIDS and gender-related stigma and discrimination, Ken currently is focused on the dynamics of programming to build social capital and its role in promoting resilience for vulnerable populations. Until recently, Ken coordinated Latin American and Caribbean regional training efforts for the National Institute of Public Health of Mexico (INSP), including the highly successful HIV diploma training course for national HIV/AIDS directors and technical officers on A_Z, treatment, prevention, monitoring and evaluation, strategic planning and related topics.

 

The extensive list of projects and agencies that Ken has worked with includes the Health Policy Project, LINKAGES, International Council of AIDS Service Organisations, the International HIV/AIDS Alliance, the International AIDS Society, UNAIDS, UNDP, and the Global Forum on MSM. Ken also distinguished himself as an organizer of HIV/AIDS thematic conferences from the level of regional and global community forums to international scientific gatherings such as the 1998 Geneva AIDS conference. While Ken is a regional expert in Latin America and the Caribbean, he currently is cultivating several West African initiatives and has extensive experience in Asia and across Africa.

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Community development, prevention and participatory research was the focus of Ken Morrison´s work in the early days of AIDS. In 1989 he began to work at the international level in coordinating fora for debate and exchange. This lead to opening to avenues of work: international technical assistance (capacity building and system strengthening) and improving evidence-informed policy change. Over the years he concentrated on the achilles heel of the response addressing issues related to stigma, discrimination, internal stigma, gender equity and social capital. He is a renowned facilitator and expert educator especially using participatory methodologies. Lots of his work has been in facilitating strategic planning processes for international organisations. He has worked in every region of the world but is located in Mexico. In Mexico he coordinated the renowned Diploma AIDS Course for the National Institute of Public Health for 20 years and currently undertakes work with states that focus on multi-sectoral responses to combination prevention.