HIV/AIDS Monitor: Tracking Aid Effectiveness

HIV/AIDS Monitor: Tracking Aid Effectiveness

Billions of dollars in aid are flowing to developing countries to confront HIV/AIDS but relatively little is known yet about the effectiveness of this aid. The HIV/AIDS Monitor is designed to help fill this knowledge gap by tracking and analyzing key features of the way aid for HIV/AIDS is allocated and disbursed, while identifying lessons relevant to broader questions about the effectiveness of development assistance.

The analysis centers on the three major HIV/AIDS aid initiatives: The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria; The President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR); and the World Bank's Multi-Country HIV/AIDS Program (MAP). Despite a common commitment to fighting the epidemic, each donor implements programs in different ways with different targets. Based on global-level analysis and case studies from three African nations, the HIV/AIDS Monitor hopes to contribute to improvements in the efficiency and effectiveness of the major aid initiatives. For more information on the HIV/AIDS Monitor project please refer to our Concept Note (PDF).

Projects in Progress

  • Country-Level Studies on:
    • Analysis on how HIV/AIDS funding works for women and OVCs
    • Relationship between funding and performance
    • Relationship of HIV/AIDS and reproductive health programs
    • Impact on labor market for health care workers and managerial talent

  • Global-Level Studies on:
    • Monitoring and Evaluation
    • The Relationship Between Funding and Performance
    • Background Paper assessing the ARV supply chain
    • Donor Gender Policies

Influence on Policy

The HIV/AIDS Monitor has been tracking the policy changes among PEPFAR, the Global Fund, and the MAP related to the recommendations that have come out of our research. Explore these changes using our interactive Flash tool.

This initiative is funded in part by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the International Development Research Centre of Canada, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency, and the Rockefeller Foundation.

Newest Popular Experts Publications Events Multimedia
  • Haitian girls and young women living in Port-au-Prince are particularly vulnerable to HIV infection, with a much higher HIV prevalence than the general population. Since the early 1980s, the Haitian Study Group on Kaposi's Sarcoma and Opportunistic Infections (GHESKIO) has provided care for HIV/AIDS, other sexually transmitted infections (STIs), diarrhea, and tuberculosis (TB) through its community- and clinic-based services. In her presentation, Dr. Marie Marcelle Deschamps, Secretary General of GHESKIO, will discuss the successes and limitations of GHESKIO's work to curb HIV infection among adolescent girls--with a specific emphasis on the challenges of working with a population with high levels of poverty and violence.
  • Few people doubt that gender inequality influences the spread of HIV/AIDS, yet public health efforts tend to focus on changing individual behavior rather than addressing structural factors—social, economic, physical and political—that influence the spread and effects of HIV and AIDS. This brief shows how three of the biggest donors to global HIV/AIDS programs can go beyond their stated commitments to address gender inequality and more effectively combat HIV and AIDS.
  • At a recent launch event for a new report Beyond Gender as Usual: How HIV/AIDS Donors Can Do More for Women and Girls released by the Center for Global Development and the International Center for Research on Women, director of CGD's HIV/AIDS Monitor Nandini Oomman and HIV/AIDS scientist Kim Ashburn's present thier findings.
  • Today in sub-Saharan Africa, 61 percent of all people infected with HIV are women, and women age 15-24 are the most vulnerable to infection. Women and girls are at greater risk of HIV infection in part due to power imbalances between women and men that limit the social and economic choices that women have--including choices about marriage, work, and the conditions of their sexual relationships. To better fight HIV/AIDS and to more effectively prevent its spread, countries and their global HIV/AIDS partners must address the increased risks, vulnerabilities, and consequences of HIV infection that are due to gender inequalities. A new CGD HIV/AIDS Monitor report finds that while the three large and influential donors--the U.S. President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, and the World Bank's Africa Multi-Country AIDS Program (the MAP)--have made high-level commitments around gender, these commitments have not yet translated into concrete and systematic action on the ground--financially or programmatically--in Mozambique, Uganda and Zambia. Join us for our report launch, where the authors, country-level officials, and representatives from the three donors will discuss and respond to key findings and recommendations.
  • Gender inequality drives the HIV epidemic, increasing the burden on women and girls and undermining the global response to the disease. A new HIV/AIDS Monitor report finds that despite well-meaning language and admirable broad goals, three of the biggest HIV/AIDS funders have yet to translate their concern for women and girls into systematic, effective programming. The report shows how to make that happen. Learn more
  • This dataset compiles selected global variables on AIDS and its treatment and prevention. The data are in the format developed by the Stata statistical software corporation and are intended for use with Over and McCarthy's AIDSCost package for the purpose of projecting the future budgetary cost of scaling up AIDS treatment.
  • CGD senior fellow Mead Over and Owen McCarthy offer a users' manual and Stata software to help students and instructors of public health, development economics, or health economics to project the future budgetary cost of AIDS treatment in poor countries and to explore the many factors affecting the calculation.
  • Please join us for a discussion with Dr. Alan Whiteside, where he will examine the origins of AIDS exceptionalism and how it has helped and hindered our response to the epidemic. Whiteside will ask if exceptionalism is still a useful concept in light of our current knowledge about the epidemic, the global financial crisis and changes in health governance. Nandini Oomman and Mead Over from the Center for Global Development will serve as discussants for what promises to be a fascinating conversation.
  • Senior fellow Mead Over estimates the effect of AIDS on poverty in South Asia and analyzes public policy options to help the region’s predominantly private health care systems meet the challenge of treating AIDS. He finds that South Asian governments should play a larger role in AIDS treatment than in other aspects of health care, in the interest of both efficiency and equity.
  • Abstract: HIV is a significant problem in sub-Saharan Africa and while many types of HIV prevention strategies have been adopted, there has been limited success with affecting behavior change. One recent potential HIV prevention strategy is male circumcision. Recent randomized control trials in South Africa, Kenya, and Uganda have provided strong evidence that male circumcision may provide an important way of reducing the spread of HIV infection. Despite this many countries have been slow at adopting male circumcision as a component of their HIV prevention strategies. One reason for this has been the concern that circumcised men learning this information may engage in riskier sex. The information about circumcision and HIV transmission rates theoretically should have asymmetric effects on men who are already circumcised and on men who are not. Upon learning that circumcision reduces the rate of HIV transmission, men who are not already circumcised may increase safe sexual behavior because they may feel less protected against the risk of infection than before they received the information. In addition, they may increase their demand for circumcision - either for themselves or for their sons. Ultimately, how individuals respond to increases or decreases in perceived risk of HIV infection is an empirical question. No studies have yet examined the behavioral responses to the provision of this information. The data used for the analysis is based on a random sample of 1250 rural Malawian men (ages 25-40) collected in late 2008. The men were asked a detailed questionnaire about their health, circumcision as well as their attitudes and beliefs about HIV prevention. As part of the survey, men were randomly allocated the information about HIV transmission risk and male circumcision. We then sold condoms to measure the demand for safe sex in response to learning (or not learning) the new information.(Joint research with Alister Munthali and Susan Godlonton)
  • James Habyarimana, Non-Resident Fellow

    James Habyarimana joined the center in September 2004 just after completing his doctoral studies in development economics at Harvard University. His main research in graduate school touched on the role of public finance in improving educational outcomes in Zambia, the disease environment as a constraint to productivity and the benefits of banking relationships to firms.

  • Nandini Oomman, Director, HIV/AIDS Monitor, and Senior Program Associate

    Nandini Oomman joined CGD in March 2006 as the director of the HIV/AIDS Monitor, which tracks the effectiveness of the three main aid responses to the epidemic: the Global Fund, the HIV/AIDS programs of the World Bank, and the U.S. President's Emergency Plan For AIDS Relief (PEPFAR).

  • Mead Over, Senior Fellow

    Mead Over applies economics and statistics in the search for more effective, efficient, and pro-poor health policies in developing countries. Among other topics, he is currently searching for paths the world might take towards a future in which AIDS will no longer be an important part of either the disease burden or the financial burden of any country.

  • Lessons Learned in Addressing HIV Infection among Haitian Adolescents - Dec 4, 2009

    Haitian girls and young women living in Port-au-Prince are particularly vulnerable to HIV infection, with a much higher HIV prevalence than the general population. Since the early 1980s, the Haitian Study Group on Kaposi's Sarcoma and Opportunistic Infections (GHESKIO) has provided care for HIV/AIDS, other sexually transmitted infections (STIs), diarrhea, and tuberculosis (TB) through its community- and clinic-based services. In her presentation, Dr. Marie Marcelle Deschamps, Secretary General of GHESKIO, will discuss the successes and limitations of GHESKIO's work to curb HIV infection among adolescent girls--with a specific emphasis on the challenges of working with a population with high levels of poverty and violence.

  • Beyond Gender as Usual: How HIV/AIDS Donors Can Do More for Women and Girls - Jul 1, 2009

    Today in sub-Saharan Africa, 61 percent of all people infected with HIV are women, and women age 15-24 are the most vulnerable to infection. Women and girls are at greater risk of HIV infection in part due to power imbalances between women and men that limit the social and economic choices that women have--including choices about marriage, work, and the conditions of their sexual relationships. To better fight HIV/AIDS and to more effectively prevent its spread, countries and their global HIV/AIDS partners must address the increased risks, vulnerabilities, and consequences of HIV infection that are due to gender inequalities. A new CGD HIV/AIDS Monitor report finds that while the three large and influential donors--the U.S. President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, and the World Bank's Africa Multi-Country AIDS Program (the MAP)--have made high-level commitments around gender, these commitments have not yet translated into concrete and systematic action on the ground--financially or programmatically--in Mozambique, Uganda and Zambia. Join us for our report launch, where the authors, country-level officials, and representatives from the three donors will discuss and respond to key findings and recommendations.

  • Why HIV/AIDS is Still Exceptional - Apr 20, 2009

    Please join us for a discussion with Dr. Alan Whiteside, where he will examine the origins of AIDS exceptionalism and how it has helped and hindered our response to the epidemic. Whiteside will ask if exceptionalism is still a useful concept in light of our current knowledge about the epidemic, the global financial crisis and changes in health governance. Nandini Oomman and Mead Over from the Center for Global Development will serve as discussants for what promises to be a fascinating conversation.

  • Circumcision, Information, and HIV Prevention - Feb 24, 2009

    Abstract: HIV is a significant problem in sub-Saharan Africa and while many types of HIV prevention strategies have been adopted, there has been limited success with affecting behavior change. One recent potential HIV prevention strategy is male circumcision. Recent randomized control trials in South Africa, Kenya, and Uganda have provided strong evidence that male circumcision may provide an important way of reducing the spread of HIV infection. Despite this many countries have been slow at adopting male circumcision as a component of their HIV prevention strategies. One reason for this has been the concern that circumcised men learning this information may engage in riskier sex.

    The information about circumcision and HIV transmission rates theoretically should have asymmetric effects on men who are already circumcised and on men who are not. Upon learning that circumcision reduces the rate of HIV transmission, men who are not already circumcised may increase safe sexual behavior because they may feel less protected against the risk of infection than before they received the information. In addition, they may increase their demand for circumcision - either for themselves or for their sons. Ultimately, how individuals respond to increases or decreases in perceived risk of HIV infection is an empirical question. No studies have yet examined the behavioral responses to the provision of this information.

    The data used for the analysis is based on a random sample of 1250 rural Malawian men (ages 25-40) collected in late 2008. The men were asked a detailed questionnaire about their health, circumcision as well as their attitudes and beliefs about HIV prevention. As part of the survey, men were randomly allocated the information about HIV transmission risk and male circumcision. We then sold condoms to measure the demand for safe sex in response to learning (or not learning) the new information.
    (Joint research with Alister Munthali and Susan Godlonton)

  • How are HIV/AIDS donors interacting with national health systems? - Aug 6, 2008

    Abstract: Health systems in Mozambique, Uganda and Zambia--as in other African countries--face major challenges that have hampered the provision of health services for decades. But in recent years they have received renewed attention, as large sums of AIDS money flow into the countries from global donors. Global AIDS donors, including the three biggest ones--PEPFAR, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, and the World Bank's Multi-Country HIV/AIDS Program for Africa--are engaged in a large-scale experiment with global health aid. As that experiment unfolds, participants and observers debate a key question: is AIDS money strengthening national health systems? Or is it weakening them by establishing heavily resourced systems focused on combating a single disease?

    A new paper from CGD's HIV/AIDS Monitor contributes to this debate by investigating how AIDS programs interact with three particular components of the health system: the health information system, the supply chain system, and human resources for health. The paper finds that all three donors have helped establish AIDS-specific systems and processes at the operational level that are distinct from those used for other health programs. Yet, these AIDS-specific processes use many of the same resources as the broader health system. The paper recommends ways for AIDS donors, given their interactions with country health systems, to seize the opportunity to expand their AIDS programs while strengthening country health systems.

  • Global Development May Meetup - May 8, 2008

    On Thursday, May 8th we will be joined by Steve Rosenzweig, Program Coordinator for the HIV/AIDS Monitor at the Center for Global Development. Rosenzweig will discuss his recent trip to Uganda, where he coordinated a workshop with the Monitor's African research partners from Mozambique, Zambia, and Uganda to wrap up their first phase of research and lay the groundwork for the next phase of research on the policies and practices of PEPFAR, the Global Fund, and the World Bank Multi-Country HIV/AIDS Program in these three countries. Rosenzweig will discuss the HIV/AIDS Monitor's next phase of research, which includes three studies on 1) how the donors are addressing issues of gender in their programs, 2) the effect of donor programs on the labor market for health workers in recipient countries, and 3) how donors are or are not integrating HIV/AIDS programs with reproductive health and family planning programs. The studies aim to analyze how donor programs are operating on the ground and make recommendations based on the analysis to improve their effectiveness. Join us at 6:30pm for casual conversation and snacks -- and we'll get the official part of the program started around 6:45pm.

  • What Are Donors Doing with AIDS Money? A Comparative Analysis of PEPFAR, Global Fund, and World Bank Funding in Mozambique, Uganda and Zambia - Oct 10, 2007

    How do AIDS donors provide money to countries affected by AIDS? Who receives this funding, and how is it spent? Is funding disbursed quickly and predictably? Does it build capacity? In a new paper from the HIV/AIDS Monitor, Nandini Oomman, Michael Bernstein and Steven Rosenzweig address these issues by describing and analyzing key features of the funding systems for three of the world's largest AIDS funders – PEPFAR, the Global Fund, and the World Bank. The paper examines these donors' practices in three African countries – Mozambique, Uganda and Zambia. The authors identify six best practices for donor funding, and make recommendations for how each donor could improve. A lively panel discussion with representatives from all three donors, and a recipient of their funding, will follow the presentation of key findings.

  • Can Public-Private Partnerships Help Stop AIDS in Africa? Lessons from Botswana - Jun 6, 2007

    An innovative model for fighting HIV/AIDS in Africa is being piloted in Botswana through a public-private partnership involving the Government of Botswana, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Merck & Co., Inc. The partnership is intended to help Botswana achieve an "AIDS-Free Generation by 2016" by expanding prevention, supporting treatment, increasing counseling and testing, and empowering communities. How does this model differ from other approaches to fighting HIV/AIDS? Has it succeeded? Can lessons from Botswana be used to develop similar public-private partnerships elsewhere in Africa? How can donors support such partnerships? Please join us for a lively discussion of these and other important issues relevant to Botswana’s national AIDS program.

  • A European Perspective on the Future of Global AIDS Programs:
    A Conversation with Five AIDS Ambassadors
    - Jan 26, 2007

    Five European AIDS ambassadors will discuss lessons learned from global AIDS programs, and opportunities and challenges for European-U.S. collaboration. After their opening presentations, the ambassadors will join audience members in breakout groups on: 1) HIV prevention, 2) Gender and HIV/AIDS, 3) Donor harmonization and coordination, and 4) Intellectual property and access to medicines. The morning will close with a plenary session featuring highlights from the breakout sessions and a lively concluding discussion.

  • Future Directions for the Global Fund - Dec 14, 2006

    The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria is at an important juncture as Richard Feachem completes his tenure as the first executive director and the Global Fund evolves from an innovative start-up to a mature organization. What are the most critical challenges in this new phase? How will the Global Fund and the U.S. Presidents Emergency Program For AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), two of the biggest HIV/AIDS funders, coordinate their activities as the fight against the epidemic intensifies? Following presentations by the speakers, Sebastian Mallaby of the Washington Post will moderate a lively conversation exploring possible future directions for the Global Fund. Presentations and discussion will draw upon the findings of a new CGD working group report that identifies key challenges and opportunities for next executive director of the Global Fund.

  • Beyond Gender as Usual (slidecast) - Jul 1, 2009
    At a recent launch event for a new report Beyond Gender as Usual: How HIV/AIDS Donors Can Do More for Women and Girls released by the Center for Global Development and the International Center for Research on Women, director of CGD's HIV/AIDS Monitor Nandini Oomman and HIV/AIDS scientist Kim Ashburn's present thier findings.
  • What Would the Poor Say: Debates in Aid Evaluation (Presentation) - Feb 13, 2009
    In a presentation delivered at NYU's Aid Watch Conference, CGD president Nancy Birdsall, in a session on accountabilty, spoke about Cash on Delivery Aid, a way for donors to transfer money that could make aid-dependent governments accountable for outcomes to their citizens -- instead of for inputs to their donors. View the Slides
  • CGD Special Discussion with David Gergen on Obama's Global Development Policy (Event Video) - Jan 17, 2009
    Director of the Center for Public Leadership at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, editor-at-large at U.S. News & World Report, and a senior political analyst for CNN, David Gergen joined CGD president Nancy Birdsall, and CGD senior fellows who authored essays in our recent book, The White House and the World: A Global Development Agenda for the Next U.S. President, for a lively discussion of the prospects for improved U.S. development policy under President Barack Obama.
  • HIV/AIDS Monitor (Interview) - Aug 4, 2008
    In this video, CGD senior program associate and director of the HIV/AIDS Monitor Nandini Oomman describes her recent finding from the Seizing the Opportunity on AIDS and Health Systems report and outline Monitors future goals.
  • HIV/AIDS Research in Mozambique (Interview) - Jun 20, 2008
    CGD’s HIV/AIDS program works with principle investigators in Uganda, Tanzania, and Mozambique. In this video, Dirce Costa, CGD’s principle investigator in Mozambique describes her research.
  • HIV/AIDS Research in Zambia (Interview) - Jun 20, 2008
    CGD’s HIV/AIDS program works with principle investigators in Uganda, Tanzania, and Mozambique. In this video, Caesar Cheelo, CGD’s principle investigator in Zambia describes his research.
  • HIV/AIDS Research in Uganda (Interview) - Jun 20, 2008
    CGD’s HIV/AIDS program works with principle investigators in Uganda, Tanzania, and Mozambique. In this video, Freddie Ssengooba, CGD’s principle investigator in Uganda describes his research.
  • What Are Donors Doing with AIDS Money? (Event) - Oct 10, 2007
    Center for Global Development senior program associate and director of the HIV/AIDS Monitor Nandini Oomman discusses HIV/AIDS funding by the world's largest AIDS funders – PEPFAR, the Global Fund, and the World Bank.

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