Population Council Research that makes a difference

In 2003, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation launched Avahan, an initiative to reduce the spread of HIV in India by expanding access to HIV prevention programs in six states of India that have high infection rates. 

Avahan is serving those most vulnerable to HIV infection, including 220,000 female sex workers, 80,000 men who have sex with men and transgendered people, 18,000 injecting drug users, and approximately 5 million truckers and clients of sex workers who are at risk of contracting HIV. The scale of this operation and the diversity of the intervention environment make Avahan a “live laboratory” of learning for HIV prevention. Since its start, a total of 24 distinguished organizations/universities, including the Population Council, have been involved in program implementation, monitoring, evaluation, advocacy, and knowledge-building. 

During this period, extensive data have been collected by Avahan’s partners. This project aims to synthesize and analyze this wealth of data to draw out programmatic findings that can be used to guide future initiatives for HIV prevention in India and other countries with similar concentrated epidemics.

Offsite link: IndiaHIV: A Knowledge Sharing Portal