Capital in Community:
Social Networks Shaping Health
By Dr. José M. Zuniga
The Baker-Cooper Memorial Lecture at Continuum 2026 provided a fitting tribute to two extraordinary HIV advocates, Mario Cooper and A. Cornelius Baker, whose lives and work were dedicated to advancing health equity, community engagement, and social justice. In this year’s lecture, Dr. Keletso Makofane challenged attendees to rethink how we understand community, health, and public health action in times of crisis.
Titled “Capital in Community: Social Networks Shaping Health,” Dr. Makofane’s memorial lecture centered on a deceptively simple idea: communities possess immense capital that extends beyond financial resources to social capital, collective expertise, trusted relationships, and the capacity to mobilize rapidly when faced with threats. These assets are often overlooked in traditional public health approaches yet can be decisive in shaping effective responses to emerging health challenges.
Drawing on lessons from the 2022 mpox outbreak, Dr. Makofane illustrated how community-led action can complement and strengthen formal public health systems. At the onset of the outbreak, public health authorities faced a daunting landscape: limited vaccine supplies, constrained testing capacity, uncertainty about transmission dynamics, and the prospect of widespread spread during the summer months. At the same time, the outbreak was disproportionately affecting gay and bisexual men, raising urgent questions about how to communicate risk effectively while avoiding stigma.
Rather than waiting for traditional systems to catch up, community members, researchers, advocates, and public health practitioners came together to launch RESPND-MI, a community-led study designed to better understand the social and geographic dimensions of mpox transmission. The initiative embodied the very principles Dr. Makofane highlighted throughout the lecture: collaboration, distributed leadership, broad consultation, cultural competence, and a commitment to collective problem-solving.
The resulting project was remarkable not only for its scientific rigor but also for its accessibility. The team developed a brief, bilingual, mobile-friendly, anonymous web application that enabled participants to map places they visited, describe social interactions, and share the survey with friends and partners. This innovative approach allowed researchers to construct a detailed picture of how people, places, and networks intersected during the outbreak while maintaining participant privacy and trust.
The data generated through this effort revealed important insights about how communities function. The study demonstrated that communities are highly interconnected networks of people and places. Certain locations served as central hubs that connected individuals across neighborhoods and boroughs. The findings also highlighted patterns of social and spatial clustering based on factors such as age, race, gender identity, and sexual orientation. These observations underscored that disease transmission is not random; it follows pathways shaped by social relationships, shared spaces, and community structures.
Perhaps most importantly, the work showed how understanding networks can improve public health interventions. By analyzing how people move through communities and interact within shared spaces, researchers were able to model different vaccination strategies. Some approaches prioritized areas with the highest levels of contact, while others focused on locations that served as bridges connecting otherwise separate groups. The analysis demonstrated that network-informed interventions can potentially improve the efficiency and effectiveness of outbreak response efforts.
Yet the lecture’s significance extended far beyond mpox. At its core, Dr. Makofane’s message was about the value of community itself. Communities are not passive recipients of services or beneficiaries of programs. They are repositories of lived experience, trusted relationships, local knowledge, and innovative capacity. In moments of uncertainty, communities often identify problems, generate solutions, and mobilize resources faster than formal institutions can act.
This message resonates strongly across the HIV response and broader public health landscape. Whether addressing HIV, sexually transmitted infections, emerging infectious diseases, chronic conditions, or the health impacts of social and structural inequities, meaningful progress depends on understanding how people connect with one another and the environments they inhabit. Public health succeeds when it works with communities rather than merely on behalf of them.
As Dr. Makofane concluded, there is tremendous talent within LGBTQ communities and other historically marginalized populations. The challenge for public health is not simply recognizing that talent, but creating the conditions for it to flourish. Social networks are not merely pathways for disease transmission; they are also pathways for information, trust, solidarity, resilience, and healing. By understanding and investing in these networks, we can build more responsive, equitable, and effective health systems.
The Baker-Cooper Memorial Lecture reminded conference attendees that the future of public health lies not only in data, technology, and biomedical innovation, but also in the enduring power of community. That lesson, embodied by the legacies of Mario Cooper and Cornelius Baker, may be among the most important tools we have for confronting the challenges that lie ahead.
Dr. José M. Zuniga is President/CEO of IAPAC, Fast-Track Health, and the Fast-Track Cities Institute.
Click here to access Dr. Makofane’s memorial lecture.
