HIV-Sensitive Social Protection

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 working paper from UNICEF Office of Research - Innocenti makes the case for investing in social protection efforts for adolescents. Reviewing governmental programmes, the paper examines whether and how current non-contributory social protection programmes are adolescent sensitive, and what their impacts are on adolescents.

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. 

This document from UNAIDS provides guidance on how to leverage and intensify the integration of HIV with social protection and other programmes for ending poverty and inequality. It further summarizes relevant evidence on social protection and its contribution to the AIDS response.