Adults

This 2023 framework from WHO and partners guides operationalization of a person-centred and integrated approach to interventions that country programmes can use to effectively scale-up triple elimination efforts and reach targets.

The novel Four Pillars Framework for Triple Elimination Implementation to guide country-led planning and implementation is aligned with the GHSS on HIV, viral hepatitis and sexually transmitted infections 2022−2030. The overarching goal of the framework is to support countries in operationalizing the move from single (HIV) and dual elimination (HIV and syphilis) to triple elimination of HIV, syphilis and HBV. This represents a major revision and modification of the 2002 UN “four-pronged strategy” for the elimination of new HIV infections among children and keeping their mother alive to include two additional conditions − syphilis and HBV − and reflects the significant updates that have been made to WHO’s technical recommendations and guidelines in the past decade.

The Four Pillars Framework focuses on distinct target populations and comprises a minimum package of essential services for each pillar:
(1) primary prevention of infection and vertical transmission
(2) SRH linkages and integration
(3) essential maternal EMTCT services and
(4) infant, child and partner services.

An opportunity to reshape gender norms on sexual and reproductive health in Rwanda: Learning from a pilot project on male partner self-testing for HIV. Rwanda conducted a research study on using self-testing and other means to improve male partner testing and engagement in PMTCT.

This document evaluates the Expansion and Scale-Up of HIV-Sensitive Social Protection in Eastern and Southern Africa initiative, implemented by UNICEF in Malawi, Mozambique, Zambia and Zimbabwe from 2014-2018 with support from the Dutch government. It assesses the extent to which the initiative met its objectives and achieved the expected results and documents the successes, challenges and lessons learned in the implementation.

Under the initiative, UNICEF Eastern and Southern Africa Regional Office (ESARO) and UNICEF Country Offices provided technical assistance to the four priority countries, and documented cross-country learnings. Activities under this initiative differed in their design and execution, allowing for adaptation to country contexts. In Malawi, activities focused on monitoring and evaluation of the National Social Support Policy; designing and implementing a system to refer cash transfer beneficiaries to HIV-related social services; and creating demand for HIV services among adolescents. In Mozambique, activities focused on providing policy-level support to the operationalization of the new social protection strategy, strengthening community-based and statutory case management, and conducting social protection fairs. In Zambia, the Government and UNICEF evaluated and scaled up a package of services that aims to increase the utilization of HIV services by adolescents. In Zimbabwe, the initiative focused on strengthening the child protection case management system and ensuring linkages between the country’s flagship cash transfer programme and HIV-related services, by using payment days to deliver services. In addition, the initiative’s regional component, led by UNICEF ESARO, focused on documentation and dissemination of best practices and overall technical assistance to the country offices involved.

This paper reviews the 2010 state of the evidence on the contribution of social protection to HIV prevention, treatment, care and support, as well as protection of key populations at higher risk of infection.

This UNAIDS guidance note summarises information on HIV-sensitive social protection, sets out key principles to provide a strong foundation for programming, and describes the potential of social protection to advance HIV prevention, treatment, care and support outcomes. This brief also presents case studies illustrating how HIV-sensitive social protection is working on the ground.

The audience is HIV policy-makers and programmers at global, regional, and country levels. It builds on the UNAIDS Business Case on Enhancing Social Protection, a UNAIDS/ UNICEF/IDS report of the evidence on HIV-sensitive social protection, and regional consultations with HIV and social protection specialists.

This policy brief outlines the key pathways through which social protection can address risk factors and contribute to preventing new HIV infections. It highlights country-level initiatives and provides policy implications and recommendations.

This brief is coauthored by UNICEF and Economic Policy Research Institute. University of Oxford, UNDP and the Transfer Project have contributed to content reflected in this brief, and USAID has endorsed the brief.

This review provides a conceptual framework for HIV-sensitive social protection policies and programmes and review the impact of social protection on HIV prevention and treatment outcomes in addition to social and economic care and support. It further provides recommendations for achieving core HIV impacts, comprehensive approaches, and expanding and sustaining HIV-sensitive social protection. 

This research brief defines 'cash plus' interventions, the menu of 'plus' components, and summarizes the evidence on their broad-ranging impacts. It further identifies lessons learned on how to make these integrated interventions work.

‘Cash plus’ interventions combine cash transfers with one or more types of complementary support. Types of complementary support can consist of (i) components that are provided as integral elements of the cash transfer intervention, such as through the provision of additional benefits or in-kind transfers, information or behaviour change communication (BCC), or psychosocial support, and (ii) components that are external to the intervention but offer explicit linkages into services provided by other sectors, such as through direct provision of access to services, or facilitating linkages to services.

Building on previous summaries, this brief summarizes the current evidence and lessons learned from the Transfer Project after more than a decade of research on cash transfers in sub-Saharan Africa.

Since 2009, the Transfer Project has generated rigorous evidence on the impacts of cash transfers in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) and has supported their expansion. It aims to provide evidence on the effectiveness of cash transfer programmes, inform the development and design of cash transfer policy and programmes, and promote learning across SSA on the design and implementation of research and evaluations on cash transfers. The Transfer Project is a collaborative network comprising UNICEF (Innocenti, Regional and Country Offices), Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, national governments and researchers. 

In the global quest to end the AIDS epidemic as a public health threat by 2030, meeting the HIV-related needs of children, adolescents and pregnant and breastfeeding women represents a critical piece of unfinished business. To inject a sense of urgency in to global efforts to end the epidemic among children, adolescents and young women, global partners joined together in 2015 to launch the Start Free, Stay Free, AIDS Free framework. Unveiled as the global community was embracing a series of 2020 targets intended to Fast-Track the HIV response, Start Free, Stay Free, AIDS Free called for a super-Fast-Track approach to end AIDS as a public health threat among children, adolescents and young women by 2020.

Since the deadline for achieving the targets passed in December 2020, this is the final Start Free, Stay Free, AIDS Free progress report. Although the targets were global, partners identified 23 countries for intensified focus under the framework. This report specifically highlights progress against the targets in focus countries. The only focus countries outside sub-Saharan Africa (India and Indonesia) do not report data on Start Free, Stay Free, AIDS Free targets and are not covered in this report.