HIV-Sensitive Social Protection

Social Protection and HIV: Research Implications for Policy by UNICEF, the Eastern and Southern Africa Regional Inter-Agency Task Team on Children Affected by AIDS (RIATT-ESA) and the Coalition for Children Affected by AIDS contain the following six briefs:

1: How can Social Protection reduce adolescent HIV-risk?

2: Combination Social Protection improves adolescent ART-adherence

3: Combination Social Protection reduces HIV-risk in adolescents

4: Social Protection: potential for improving HIV outcomes among adolescents

5: Social Protection and the Sustainable Development Goals

6: Combination Social Protection lowers unprotected sex in HIV-positive adolescents

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.

Adolescents living with HIV have unique needs, and retention in care can be especially challenging for this population. Adolescent “teen clubs” can provide a source of social support that helps improve retention and adherence. HIV prevention among adolescents also remains challenging because there are multiple factors that can place adolescents at risk. Risk perception, especially among adolescent girls and young women (AGYW),remains low despite high levels of general knowledge about HIV. Further efforts are needed to support adolescents, especially AGYW, to understand and appreciate their own risk and to identify the most appropriate prevention strategies to protect themselves from acquiring HIV.

Towards an end to AIDS in children, adolescents and young women.

This case study is part of the Eastern and Southern Africa (ESA) ALL IN Initiative on Kenya's revision of tools/systems for disaggregation to strengthen adolescent strategic information.

This article is part of the Eastern and Southern Africa (ESA) ALL IN Blog Series on Rwanda's operational plan for adolescent HIV and sexual and reproductive health

This article is part of the Eastern and Southern Africa (ESA) ALL IN Blog Series on catalyzing adolescent participation around HIV in Mozambique.