USAID Extends AIDS Project Five Years

WASHINGTON, DC-The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and Population Services International (PSI) have signed an agreement for a five-year, $90 million extension of AIDSMark, a global project that uses social marketing to curb the spread of HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted infections (STIs).

The current five-year, $75 million agreement, which started in 1997 and is due to expire this year, will extend AIDSMark activities until September 2007. PSI is a non-profit organization based in Washington, D.C., with social marketing projects in more than 60 countries.

"We are pleased to continue our partnership with Population Services International's AIDSMark program," said Dr. Anne Peterson, who runs USAID's Bureau for Global Health. "The services they provide are a critical element in our fight against HIV/AIDS."

AIDSMark collaborates with USAID and other international donors, host governments, non-governmental organizations and commercial enterprises to:

• Expand current social marketing programs to include a wider range of products and services, reach additional target groups and intensify efforts within current target groups.
• Increase the capacity of programs in such areas as management, marketing, communications, research and sustainability.
• Start new social marketing programs.

"The five-year extension of AIDSMark will allow PSI to accelerate engagement of private sector forces in the fight against HIV/AIDS worldwide," said Richard A. Frank, president of PSI. "The next phase of USAID's support will allow PSI to build on successes with behavior change communication, voluntary counseling and testing, condom social marketing and expand newer strategies such as the prevention of mother-to-child transmission, delay of sexual debut among youth and the franchising of services to treat sexually transmitted infections. The scope of AIDSMark will go far beyond PSI's traditional role in condom social marketing."

AIDSMark operates through 29 countries where PSI has HIV/AIDS prevention programs. All of these programs operate condom social marketing projects, 14 deliver voluntary counseling and testing services, and three offer STI services.

In order to increase the impact of PSI's social marketing activities, AIDSMark envisions a number of activities during the next five-year phase, including the following:

• Developing communications strategies that address barriers to HIV/AIDS prevention on a regional or global basis. This is already happening in southern Africa where AIDSMark is developing a pan-African campaign addressing key obstacles to behavior change, such as trust in one's partner.
• Promoting voluntary HIV counseling and testing (VCT) so that people have the information they need to make informed decisions about their behavior. AIDSMark's VCT program in Zimbabwe has increased its monthly client flow from 230 to more than 4,000 in only three years.
• Collaborating with other key partners to develop social marketing models for the prevention of mother-to-child transmission. AIDSMark has already started in Haiti where it is now delivering PMTCT products and services
• Conduct program planning sessions of PSI HIV/AIDS prevention programs to reconcile epidemiological priorities with programmatic activities.
• Conducting an assessment of male circumcision (MC) programs in Western Kenya and Haiti, and launching two pilot MC programs.
• Collaborating with partners to enable country programs to deal more effectively with the issue of cross-generational sex, older men seeking sexual relations with younger women. Two literature reviews have been completed.

AIDSMark has made substantial progress during the first four and a half years of the original agreement. AIDSMark core staff have provided marketing, research and other support to programs throughout the PSI network. This has resulted in an expansion in the scope and impact of PSI's social marketing programs for HIV/AIDS prevention, and the recognition that AIDSMark is providing leadership in the area of social marketing for AIDS prevention globally. A few of the key accomplishments of AIDSMark to date are:

• Assisted nine new countries in fiscal year 2002 so far: Bolivia, Bosnia, Botswana, Bulgaria, Croatia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mozambique and Nicaragua.
• Provided assistance to field programs by developing local capacity in marketing and communications.
• Improved availability of and capacity to generate and apply data to monitor and evaluate HIV/AIDS/STI prevalence, trends and program impacts.
• Monitored and evaluated project interventions.
• Monitored and evaluated social marketing organizations' institutional capacity.
• Collected and distributed research protocols and survey templates.

USAID is the world's leader in providing funding to fight the HIV/AIDS pandemic. Since 1986, it has provided $2.2 billion for prevention, care and treatment programs in over 50 countries around the world.

–David J. Olson, Senior Manager of Public Affairs at PSI/Washington

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