Adults

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. 

This flyer provides a quick overview of UNICEF's results within HIV and AIDS in 2020. It describes achievements within UNICEF's main programmatic areas: prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV, treatment of children and adolescents living with HIV, and HIV prevention in adolescents. 

UNICEF's Global Annual Results Report - Goal Area 1 describes results achieved in more detail from p. 132-150.
 

Global and regional epidemiological and response snapshots based on the UNAIDS 2019 HIV estimates.

The four investment cases above highlight opportunities for the private sector to engage in the global HIV response for infants, children and adolescents in partnership with UNICEF.

This document outlines evidence-based practices for retention in care of mother-infant pairs in the context of elimination of mother-to-child transmission of HIV (EMTCT) in Eastern and Southern Africa.

Developed by the UNICEF Eastern and Southern Africa Regional Office (ESARO) with support from HIV colleagues and partners, the report provides a review of the evidence-base on improving care for women living with HIV and their infants. It builds on the conceptual framework outlined in UNICEF’s Community-Facility Linkages report through an extensive literature review, stakeholder consultations and country visits.

Ten evidence-based practices were identified in the areas of service quality, human resources, use of health information and demand generation. The report describes these practices, including key considerations for implementation, helpful tools and resources. As countries take these evidence-based practices to scale, even greater numbers of vulnerable women and children will be given the opportunity not only to survive, but also to thrive, and the world will move closer to ending AIDS among children.

HIV-sensitive Social Protection: With focus on creating linkages between social cash transfer programmes and HIV services describes an intervention aiming to strengthen the linkages between HIV services and national social protection programmes and provides lessons learned from implementing the intervention in four countries. The focus of the programme is on families with children and adolescents, vulnerable to, or affected by HIV and AIDS. The programme, funded by the Government of the Netherlands, is now being implemented in Malawi, Mozambique, Zambia and Zimbabwe in close collaboration with national, provincial and district level governments.

This publication shares the perspectives of women from all over the world, including policymakers and researchers, doctors and campaigners who are helping lead the HIV response for women and children. Their testimonies illuminate and personalize the data and the narrative in the rest of the report.