Improving data access and use for HIV biomedical prevention interventions

Over the past decade, biomedical prevention interventions—including voluntary medical male circumcision (VMMC) and oral pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP)—have resulted in substantial gains in controlling the global HIV epidemic. Despite the inclusion of these highly effective interventions in multinational strategies and global prevention toolkits, their effective implementation rests upon context-specific, data-driven delivery to priority populations and geographies. Project SOAR has contributed to the evidence base by increasing access to and use of data through user-friendly interfaces and dissemination strategies, advancing VMMC and PrEP as vital prevention interventions in the global discourse. SOAR’s biomedical prevention portfolio has supported data-driven planning, implementation, and monitoring of VMMC and/or PrEP programs and policies in ten countries—Eswatini, Kenya, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zimbabwe. This brief synthesizes results from ten countries that advanced modeling and costing for data-driven PrEP and VMMC programming, and VMMC tool development, dissemination, and use