Grant: Planning and Dissemination Grant - Institute Community Support

HIV behavioural surveillance systems were designed to provide a robust evidence-based system for tracking trends in HIV-related knowledge, attitudes, and behaviours in key populations at increased risk for HIV acquisition. These systems provide fundamental data on progress towards the UNAIDS 90-90-90 targets through estimates of undiagnosed infection and measures of the proportion of people living with HIV on sustained treatment and virally suppressed. However, global collaborations on behavioural surveillance have been primary limited by a lack of common indicators and variations in design. The value of harmonizing and comparing data across jurisdictions would allow for an impact evaluation of country-level policy and programmatic response and sufficient statistical power to examine key sub-populations. The goal of this grant is to support the development of the global HIV Behavioural Surveillance for the 21st Century (BS21) Network. The BS21 Network seeks to understand better the HIV research and behavioural surveillance landscape across the world, and to plan future research collaborations and projects to ensure HIV behavioral surveillance remains relevant and impactful in the current era of HIV anti-retroviral prevention. Through this grant, we will: I) organize a two-day in-person meeting of global leaders in HIV behavioural surveillance (researchers and knowledge users) to disseminate research findings and methodological innovations; II) host an official Pre-Congress Symposium at the 2019 STI & AIDS World Congress to officially launch the BS21 Network and to increase capacity and broaden engagement in behavioural surveillance; and III) submit a novel cross-country research operating grant proposal to test innovative HIV bio-behavioural surveillance approaches. Supporting the global BS21 Network will help promote robust, sustainable, and cost-effective data collection methods as well as stimulate new innovations in domestic and global behavioural surveillance.