HIV/AIDS Monitor

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From 2006 until 2010, the HIV/AIDS Monitor focused on the performance of three HIV/AIDS donor programs—the U.S. government's President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), the Global Fund for AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (The Global Fund), and the World Bank's Multi-Country AIDS Program (MAP). The Center for Global Development’s HIV/AIDS Monitor team, led by Nandini Oomman examined key issues in the design, delivery and management of these donor programs, and provided timely analyses to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of each initiative. 

Global Level and Country-based reports on the HIV/AIDS programs, produced in collaboration with partners on the ground in Mozambique, Uganda and Zambia, provided evidence-based policy recommendations to the top donors. Over the course of the initiative, with ongoing research and active outreach of its findings, the Monitor team accomplished the following at the global and country level:

  1. Influenced PEPFAR and other donor policies and practices
    CGD played an important role in informing and shaping the policies of the three donors on an ongoing basis over the last four years. The HIV/AIDS Monitor's recommendations are now reflected in donor current strategies and actions. For example:

  2. Increased PEPFAR’s Transparency and Release of Data
    An ongoing push throughout the Monitor research recommendations has been the importance of accurate, transparent and readily available data to inform programming at the donor and country level.  Our 2008 report, Numbers Behind the Stories, which analyzed newly available PEPFAR data not otherwise public, stressed the importance of making funding data widely available.  Our report argues that knowledge of official data on obligations to recipients of the funds improves transparency and allows for accurate analyses of its cost-effectiveness. Knowledge from this report, as well as our other reports that looked more specifically at issues surrounding the availability of programmatic data, informed Nandini Oomman’s memo to President Obama encouraging him to allow for the more public release of PEPFAR data. Evidence from updated PEPFAR policies shows that the U.S. government is heeding this advice—more data on financial obligations by the U.S. Government to specific countries are being released on the website (they were previously redacted) and PEPFAR’s Five-Year Strategy 2009-2014 cites "working to expand publicly available data" as a key initiative in its next five years, though types of data (financial, programmatic, etc.) have yet to be specified.

  3. Informed Congressional Oversight of PEPFAR’s bilateral and multilateral global AIDS Funding
    The HIV/AIDS Monitor team provided senior Congressional staff (Democrat and Republican) with study findings and recommendations to inform the creation of new policies (such as reauthorization of PEPFAR), new strategies (PEPFAR II) and new U.S.G global health initiatives (U.S. Global Health Initiative), and monitor the progress of current policies as legislated. In addition, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) team tasked by Congress with oversight of PEPFAR routinely consulted CGD experts on Monitor findings to frame questions for their studies and to use our research results as additional evidence in their reports.  In the words of a GAO staff person, “The HIV/AIDS Monitor publications helped us understand the issues surrounding PEPFAR implementation…which in turn helped us define the scope of our research” The Institute of Medicine (IOM) team charged by Congress with the evaluation of PEPFAR II also consulted with the HIV/AIDS Monitor team in preparing background information for the Committee that will plan and implement the evaluation.

  4. Increased the visibility of AIDS funding and global health as a key aid effectiveness issue at the global and country level
    The HIV/AIDS Monitor built a brand on the topic of aid effectiveness for AIDS and Global Health funding at the global and country level. By documenting donor policies and practices and sharing these widely with different audiences in the U.S. and globally, the HIV/AIDS Monitor has raised the importance of this topic through several different channels such as publications, events, and extensive use of the World Wide Web. For example, at the global level, a CGD background report  shed light on the workings of, and challenges to, antiretroviral supply chains for developing countries—and triggered supply-chain stakeholders to increase the efficiency of the Global Supply Chain and another  CGD background report contributed to the debate about increasing aid effectiveness by describing how the three donors take program performance into consideration when making final decisions about funding .  At the country level, such as in Zambia, CGD’s report, Following the Funding for HIV/AIDS, was reported (by a donor official) to have influenced the design and process of tracking the HIV/AIDS funds within the National Health Accounts in the Ministry of Health and  in the drafting of the International Health Partnership position paper of MOH. In Uganda, the results of the gender theme were presented in parliament and at the health sector review meeting at the invitation of the Director General. A senior official in the MOH reported that lessons learnt from the HIV/AIDS Monitor have influenced their dialogues with donors.

Today, following many of the HIV/AIDS Monitor's recommendations, bilateral and multilateral donors continue to support the HIV/AIDS response in the developing world, moving away from a vertical disease approach to one that focuses on strengthening a country’s capacity to respond to HIV/AIDS as part of a broader set of global health priorities.

The Center for Global Development continues to track ongoing policy changes related to the HIV/AIDS Monitor team's findings and follows the effectiveness of global health development assistance through its research, blogs and global health policy newsletter that is published monthly.