Guide to Indicators for Monitoring and Evaluating National HIV/AIDS Prevention Programmes for Young People (A)

The goal of HIV prevention programmes is to reduce the transmission of HIV. Since people aged under 25 have had a relatively short time in which to become
infected, most infections in this age group have been recently acquired. As a result this guide recommends that most of the indicators be collected with young people aged up to 24 years. Prevalence in this group can therefore be a good measure of the rate at which the epidemic is progressing and can show where prevention programmes are making a difference. The indicators in this guide are such a proposed set, with the aim contributing to comparability of data across surveys, across regions and across time, and therefore improving data collection efforts

According to this guide, the best measure of the long-term impact of all HIV prevention activities is the HIV incidence rate (namely the number of new cases
of HIV infection per year divided by the number of HIV-negative individuals in the population at the start of the year.) According to this report, data on HIV incidence are scarce and usually relate to small groups rather than nationally representative samples.

This guide complements the indicators included in other UNAIDS monitoring and evaluation publications by refining the indicators that have already been
defined and proposing new ones that are in relatively early phases of development and use. These new indicators are included so as to ensure that policies
and programmes benefit from the lessons learnt during the past decade and to provide experience of their measurement and use.

The recommended methodology of data collection throughout most of this guide is a national or regional household survey of young people. School-based surveys are also used but this report describes two main drawbacks: 1) they are not representative of the overall population of young people; and, 2) in some countries overall school attendance is low so a substantial proportion of the young population would be left out of the sample. Nevertheless, school-based surveys are considered a valuable additional source of information, which used in conjunction with a household survey give insight into specific issues, particularly those related to school-based interventions.

According to this guide, "the most important point is the synergy of different methods and efforts of data collection in providing a comprehensive picture of issues relevant to preventing and treating HIV/AIDS among young people. All surveys - whether household-based, school-based, or with special populations - should include a key set of core indicators relevant to HIV and young people."

Click here for this guide in English, French and Spanish (in PDF format) on the WHO website.