Maretha Visser PhD

Maretha Visser, PhD is a Professor at the University of Pretoria. She completed her Doctor of Philosophy at the University of Pretoria. Much of the research I have done focused on the development, implementation and evaluation of large-scale community interventions to improve health and mental health in communities. Because of the implications of HIV in communities, a large focus of my work was around HIV prevention, the development of supportive interventions for people living with HIV, and community stigma. Recently I have done evaluation studies of orphans and vulnerable children programs and therapy programs for sexually abused children (for PACT-SA and USAIDS). I initiated a research programme on vulnerable children which aims to develop various interventions for vulnerable children in our community, including HIV-infected children, orphans, and vulnerable children and abused children. I specialize in mixed methods designs in evaluation studies and prefer action research in the implementation of interventions.