The heat is rising—not just from the sun, but from the weight of stories unspoken and those brave enough to be told. I am here as a Behavioral Design Researcher for MY WAY, an initiative aimed at increasing PrEP uptake among adolescent girls, young women, and pregnant and lactating mothers. Statistically, this demographic is more vulnerable to HIV. But behind the statistics are lives deeply entangled in stigma, silence, trauma and sheer survival.
We gather in small, quiet circles under trees, on borrowed church benches, in school halls that still smell faintly of chalk and yesterday’s lessons. These are not grand stages. Just modest corners of space where voices can rise and fall without interruption.
At first, the girls speak haltingly, as if testing the air for safety. But once one begins, the others follow. The stories pour out: raw, unfiltered. Some are edged with laughter, the kind that masks more than it reveals. But mostly, there is distress. Not the loud, theatrical kind. A quieter ache. The kind that has waited too long for someone to listen.
One young woman looks up and says:
“It’s like walking through a minefield. There are explosions everywhere. My thoughts are not safe. I get maybe 15 seconds of peace… then, just darkness.”
I hold my pen and notebook tighter. They feel useless. Heavy. Like armor I didn’t ask for, like a barrier between her truth and my need to make sense of it on paper.
During fieldwork, I learned that the entire area was being served by only three mental health practitioners. Hundreds of girls and women and almost no infrastructure to hold their stories, let alone help them heal. It quickly became clear: the stigma surrounding PrEP wasn’t just medical. It wasn’t just social. It was personal, intimate, and often rooted in unaddressed trauma, emotional abuse, and generational neglect.
One interview, in particular, stays with me. A respondent, voice barely above a whisper, said she thought about ending her husband’s life every day. He had knowingly withheld his HIV-positive status from her. Never disclosed it, not before marriage, not after, not even during the early months when trust was still something she clung to. It only surfaced when he fell critically ill from not taking his meds.
The betrayal. The quiet rage. The devastation. Her relationship with PrEP wasn’t about stigma or misinformation, it was about surviving the aftermath of psychological and relational wreckage.
With my background in psychology, my instinct was to sit with her pain, ask more, offer something… comfort, counsel, even just presence. But that wasn’t what the interview was for. That wasn’t supposed to go in the transcript. And yet, in that moment, the lines between researcher, human, and advocate blurred in ways I couldn’t unfeel.
In the field, we are trained to observe, to listen, to document. To maintain distance unless it’s a matter of life or death. The structure of the data must remain intact. But what happens when that distance collapses? When you are no longer “researcher” in the eyes of a respondent—but simply another human sitting across from them, holding their truth?
What if your silence, in the name of neutrality, becomes its own kind of violence?
This isn’t a call for saviorism. The women we meet are not broken. They are whole, resilient, walking through unrelenting terrain with astonishing courage. But some of them are hurting. Deeply. In ways no research output, no policy document, and no carefully worded insight report will ever fully capture.
So I adapted. I redesigned some of our interview questions to be more trauma-informed, more spacious. I began mapping out informal referral pathways in the community, just in case someone needed support, even if unofficial. The budget didn’t allow for formal aftercare. But I couldn’t unknow what I now knew. And while it wasn’t part of our scope, it was part of my responsibility.
Just like corporations hold social responsibility, researchers too must consider personal social responsibility. When you’re on the ground and witness needs that live outside your project brief, you have a choice: walk away because it’s not your job or respond because it’s the right thing to do.
Even within limited resources, there’s always room for compassion, creativity, and care.
I’ve come to believe that the future of meaningful public health research doesn’t just lie in smarter tools or sharper metrics. It lies in acknowledging the invisible labor of emotional holding that researchers do. Especially in contexts where silence has long been a shield.
Can our research frameworks include built-in emotional redress? Post-interview debriefs? Community-led referral systems that are safe and culturally grounded?
Can we co-create “aftercare kits” the same way we design feedback tools and interview guides?
Can we be allowed, without compromising objectivity, to care?
I still carry these questions. I carry the voices too. In my notebooks. In my chest.
Because some stories you cannot unhear.
Some hearts you carry home with you.
And maybe, just maybe, that’s where the real work begins.
Not as saviors, but as seers.
Not rescuers, but rememberers.
Witnesses and bridge builders.
And maybe our most important data point is not what we extract, but what we choose to leave behind: dignity, connection, and the quiet belief that someone finally saw you.
