There is a sense of purpose and urgency to everything Joe Lugalla says and does; a sense that time is precious and cannot be wasted.

But make no mistake. There is not an ounce of vanity or ego about this man. He is merely a realist, and his work demands it. Since the AIDS epidemic was first discovered in the early 1980s, 83 percent of all AIDS deaths have been in sub-Saharan Africa. Tanzania is one of the countries that has been severely affected by the epidemic, and about 10 percent of AIDS orphans live there.

Lugalla is an internationally known sociologist and anthropologist, but the research he does is not in a foreign place or on lofty issues. It is in the country where he was born, on topics that directly affect his family and friends.

The creases on his forehead deepen as he talks about the country he left just a few years ago. Lugalla’s family still lives in the village where he grew up. There are no flush toilets, no electricity, and no piped water.

“I understand poverty,” he says. “Every month I lose someone I know to AIDS. People are dying every day. In some places in Africa there are no cemeteries. People are buried right outside the house or in the farm surrounding the house. So every morning when people walk out the door and every day when they come back, they see the graves. This a powerful message that is contributing to behavioral changes.”

Lugalla knows firsthand. Every summer he returns to Tanzania to see his family and to continue his research on AIDS and the children living on the streets as a result of the disease.

“It is very hard to be away from my family,” he admits, “but knowing I can help gives me comfort. I feel like I’m making a difference. I’m not simply doing research. I look for ways my research can be used and turned into policies.”

Lugalla says he came to the United States in 1993 because working in an international setting is very enriching. “Information is power, and in the U.S. I have easy access to information that helps me in understanding the problems that face not only Africa or the U.S., but other countries in the world.”

His first position was as a research fellow in the department of social medicine at Harvard. The interdisciplinary program had social scientists and medical doctors working together on a shared belief that health problems are not caused by medical problems alone, but social factors, too. Lugalla joined the faculty at UNH in 1995. He is a founding member of the Centre for Social Policy, Health Promotion, Social Justice, and Sustainable Development in Tanzania, and, since 1987, has been part of a collaborative project between Swedish and Tanzanian universities on HIV/AIDS.

“I want to be in a public setting because I know that we can change the world by sharing ideas,” Lugalla says. “If 20 students believe in what I’m saying, and can internalize it and share it, in a year I’ve reached 1,000 people.”

Lugalla wants to expose American students to the wider world. “It helps them see there are other people with their own ways of life, their own cultures and beliefs and values. The U.S. is not the whole world, I tell them. You have to understand what is happening around you and why.”

—Erika L. Mantz,
UNH News Bureau