The document summarizes a training program that aims to strengthen HIV prevention capacity in six countries. It provides an overview of the program's goals and key areas, including capacity building, care for orphans and vulnerable children, HIV prevention, and community-based care. The training uses a modular curriculum to teach participants about combining prevention strategies, understanding transmission dynamics, and managing prevention programs for outcomes. It also discusses challenges in translating new evidence into practice and solutions like adapting training to local contexts.

1. Stronger health systems. Greater health impact.
HIV Prevention CommunicationManagement Sciences for Health
Training: New evidence, new thinking
MSH Building Local Capacity Project 1

2. BLC Project Overview:
• BLC supports local and regional institutions to
improve health care and HIV prevention services by
strengthening both technical leadership and
management capacity
• Regional and country activities
• 6 countries
• Regional organizations
• Key Program Areas Management Sciences for Health
• Capacity Building,
• Care & support for
OVC
• HIV prevention
• Community-based
care
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3. BLC Project: HIV prevention
• BLC supports the SADC HIV Unit to strengthen
its strategic leadership role for HIV Prevention
and build the HIV prevention capacity of
member states.
• Partnership with SADC HIV Unit and Centre for
AIDS Development Research and Evaluation
(CADRE) Management Sciences for Health
• Target group: HIV program managers in
Government
( Ministry of Health, Education), National AIDS
Council, and CSO partners
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4. New evidence – new thinking
• Based on extensive review of literature and existing
materials
• Facilitation processes and communication materials
piloted in five trainings in Tanzania, Zimbabwe, and
South Africa
• 115 individuals involved representing 50 CSOs,
international NGOs, and government departments
Management Sciences for Health
• Modularized training curriculum with 10 half-day
presentations and workshop processes with
exercises
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5. What have we learned about
existing prevention capacity?
• Significant gaps and missed opportunities: HIV care
and support, HBC, OVC programs, family
planning, HCT
• Widespread difficulty in grasping more abstract
concepts: partial protection, targeting general
population, sero-discordance
Management Sciences for Health
• Significant variation by country
• Little diffusion of understanding of new thinking to
local levels and little evidence of learning from or
sharing of experiences
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6. What have we learned (Cont)
• Direct community prevention interventions are usually
project-based rather than strategic or continuous
• Low dose, opportunistic, event-focused HIV prevention
efforts with little consideration of local dynamics of
transmission, selection, or targeting
• Largely information based; little understanding or use of
communication or socialManagement Sciences for Health
and behavioural
methodologies, multilevel or combination
strategies, results-based management, or local level
collaboration or long-term strategic thinking
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7. Foundations of prevention
thinking in the training program
Oriented and focused on:
• Theory of change, combination prevention, social
ecology framework, results-based management
approaches
• Addressing modes and dynamics of transmission
• Role of communication in social and behavioral
change Management Sciences for Health
• Evidence-based thinking at local level (KYE, KYR)
• ‘Options’ for prevention and offering combination
prevention options
• Basic science of HIV/AIDS
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8. Format
• Participants seated at tables of four people to allow
for small group discussion at key moments in the
presentations
• Each presentation is followed by a practical exercise
conducted in small groups to localize, contextualize,
and develop practical understanding of key concepts
Management Sciences for Health
• Each day begins with a review of overnight questions
and ends with a reflection on the day’s learning
experiences
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9. Structure
BLOCK 1 – Know your epidemic - Know your response
 Module 1: Know your epidemic - Big picture and country picture
 Module 2: How HIV works
 Module 3: Reviewing prevention options - Know your response
BLOCK 2 – Plan your response
 Module 4: A social ecology approach to prevention planning
 Module 5: Communication for HIV prevention
 Module 6: Combination prevention Sciences for Health
Management
 Module 7: Managing for outcomes
BLOCK 3: Targeting key drivers of infection
 Module 8: Addressing dynamics of generalized epidemics
 Module 9: Addressing the needs of high-risk populations
 Module 10: PHDP
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10. BLOCK 1 –
Know your
epidemic -
Know your
response
Management Sciences for Health
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11. BLOCK 2 –
Plan your
response
Management Sciences for Health
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12. BLOCK 3: Targeting key drivers
of infection
Management Sciences for Health
Image: Faraja Trust
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13. Challenges
• National strategic frameworks may reflect new advances
in HIV prevention, but may not outline how advances
may be incorporated in implementation plans at a
programme, project and community level.
• Need for concerted efforts to translate new evidence
about HIV prevention needs and effectiveness into
practice
• This may require departure from standard approaches;
Management Sciences for Health
and the need to ‘reboot’ in some areas (paradigm shift)
rather than ‘infuse’ new understanding
• Approach may require some departure from existing
commitments and programmatic approaches and this
can prove challenging to secure.
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14. Solutions
• Adapt the program in each country, keeping with local
HIV dynamics and implementation conditions or
opportunities
• Allow for considerable lag-time before capacity building
efforts to support the approach are adopted by most-
relevant country-level agencies
• Approach appears to be best supported by existing plans
to implement combination prevention and existing
Management Sciences for Health
communication frameworks which cut across a range of
implementing agencies
• Social ecology approach allows bridging the gap
between developmental and ‘topical’ approaches to
prevention in country level prevention approaches
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15. Stronger health systems. Greater health impact.
Saving lives and improving the health
of the world’s poorest and most vulnerable people
Management Sciences for Health
by closing the gap between knowledge and action in public
health.
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