What: Dr Thomas Odeny: Text messaging to improve attendance at post-operative clinic visits and reduce early resumption of sex after adult male circumcision for HIV prevention. When: Tuesday, May 21st at 12 noon Where: The Allen Center, CSE 203 Over the last four years there has been significant discussion, both domestically and internationally, about the WHO and UNAIDS recommendation to circumcise men for HIV prevention. Several countries throughout sub-Saharan Africa have been scaling up programs that provide voluntary male circumcision, with Kenya leading in the greatest number of procedures performed. While Kenya has been successful at facilitating the operations, the greatest challenge has been in follow-up of men after surgery to monitor wound healing, facilitating early detection and treatment of adverse events, and to reinforce post-operative care instructions including risk-reduction counseling and promotion of delayed resumption of sex. Unfortunately, many men fail to return for scheduled post-operative visits. The rapid increase in mobile phone connections in Kenya presents an affordable, low-cost, and potentially effective avenue to improve attendance at post-operative clinic visits and promote delayed resumption of sex. Dr Thomas Odeny is currently a Post-Graduate Fellow at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation in the Department of Global Health, where he is learning new and innovative tools for research in the field of health metrics. He is also a PhD student in the Department of Epidemiology advised by Drs Scott McClelland, Elizabeth Bukusi, and King Holmes. Previously, he was a Fogarty International Clinical Research Fellow in Kisumu, Kenya, where he was PI for a study aimed at leveraging mobile technology to address the global health challenge of HIV prevention and care among women and children entitled, “Improving uptake of early infant diagnosis of HIV for PMTCT: a randomized trial of a text messaging intervention.” He received the Outstanding Student Award in Epidemiology (MPH) in 2012. For his MPH thesis, he conducted a 1,200-person randomized trial on text messaging to improve outcomes after adult male circumcision for HIV prevention in Kenya. This study won him a nomination for the Top 11 in 2011 mHealth Innovators Challenge by the mHealth Alliance and Rockefeller Foundation, and a Young Investigator Award at the 19th Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections. He remains committed to long-term service in both HIV programs and research in Kenya. Having come face-to-face with the magnitude of health disparities in Kenya, his passion is to become a more capable global health researcher working to reduce new HIV infections and finding more effective ways of providing and sustaining care in sub-Saharan Africa.