There is an urgent need to address inequities in global health practices, including how data are collected and used. In the case of HIV data, UNAIDS has consistently strived to strengthen partnerships with countries to support them in their data journeys, from collecting to using HIV data.
UNAIDS' approach to data systems is different than other global organizations. UNAIDS engages with countries to strengthen their information systems, conduct data reviews and use data to steer the HIV response. UNAIDS facilitates strong collaboration across all stakeholders in the country including bringing different voices to the data reviews, linking the reporting process with capacity strengthening, and finally ensuring that countries lead and come to consensus on one set of data.
The strength of the UNAIDS approach comes from our country and regional presence that ensures UNAIDS support through each step of the process, from data quality control to dissemination and knowledge translation.
This process starts with in-country data quality reviews, followed by training and continued support throughout the process. UNAIDS regularly convenes epidemiologists and data experts and other national stakeholders in regional workshops to share the latest tool and skills to contribute into national capacity to better understand their HIV epidemics and to use the data to guide more effective and efficient national HIV responses to close the inequities. This participatory approach helps countries to develop a harmonized and better understanding of their HIV epidemics and interpret and apply the data more effectively for HIV programming.
"Supporting countries to gather the most accurate picture of their national epidemic in a granular manner is a strategic priority for UNAIDS, national partners and donors." said Angeli Achrekar, UNAIDS Deputy Executive Director, Programmes. "We firmly believe that working together in this partnership, with countries in the lead, and experts, partners and communities at the table we deliver more impactful results."
A total of nine regional estimates workshops takes place as part of this round of training, running from December 2024 to February 2025. The first two workshop were held from 2-13 December in Johannesburg, South Africa where epidemiologists, HIV data managers, and other partners reviewed their programme data and found areas for improvement, and updated their modelled estimates of HIV incidence, mortality and measured progress toward the 95-95-95 targets for 2025 at national and sub-national levels. The models are a way of triangulating programme data, surveillance data, survey results, and underlying demographic data into a consistent understanding of the trends in the epidemic.
This collaborative, workshop process concludes with each country developing a comprehensive and nuanced summary of their epidemics, including having detailed information about the inequalities that persist over time. The models also allow countries to make projections to guide more targeted responses into the future informing their Sustainability Roadmaps effort using state-of-the-art modelling tools.
In countries with UNAIDS strategic information advisors, they support national counterparts in leading the estimates work year-round, together with other international partners such as the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, US Government, UNICEF and WHO. This ensures the annual estimates are derived from the best possible data and fully owned by countries and partners.
Similarly, it ensures that all stakeholders in the country agree on one set of estimates for planning and reporting. It is this continuous support that ensures countries are equipped to lead their data initiatives effectively. Furthermore, this participatory approach enables countries not only to be data contributors but to lead in interpreting and applying the data.
In addition to having a greater clarity on the expected course of their national epidemics, countries are able to plan their responses and develop a detailed annual report on their epidemics. This data is used by national governments, major partners like PEPFAR, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria and community networks to develop more effective and efficient response plans based on the latest information on the course of the epidemic. UNAIDS also compiles and publishes these data, once validated, through its annual Global AIDS Update report and on AIDSinfo, the UNAIDS online data dissemination platform.
In the past two decades, UNAIDS has transformed the approach to global health data from extractive top-down models with minimal country input to inclusive, equitable, and collaborative processes. This approach shifts the power back to countries, prioritizes national ownership, partnership, transparency, and capacity, ensuring that countries are leading in using and interpreting their data -- with support from UNAIDS and other development partners.
A suite of tools has been developed to help countries produce more accurate data. These tools are free, widely distributed, and used by epidemiologists across more than 170 countries, promoting equitable access to high-quality methodologies. To foster transparency, the methodology, assumptions, and parameters of the models and tools are published in open access journals and expert deliberations are posted at www.epidem.org.