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# Policies

PEPFAR’s transformative, lifesaving impact is unassailable, but our work is not finished to country and PEPFAR uses granular dataand surveys to understand and rapidly confront these to accomplish our mission. The HIV/AIDS pandemic continues to evolve in every community and changes. The HIV/AIDS pandemic continues to evolve in every community and changes. PEPFAR is defined by the constant change needed to address new risk groups, new health challenges, and persistent gaps.

## Using Data to Drive Policies and Impact

PEPFAR uses data to focus investments on evidence-based interventions in the geographic areas and populations with the greatest HIV/AIDS burden for maximum impact. Utilizing data for decision-making is critical to reaching those in most need of HIV prevention and treatment services. Programmatic and surveillance data on HIV incidence, viral suppression, prevalence, across gender and all age groups are essential to evaluating progress toward the achievement of epidemic control. PEPFAR disaggregates all of its data by sex, age, and geography. This allows us to target and tailor our efforts to reach the specific and unique needs of those we serve.

PEPFAR shows the power of what is possible through compassionate, cost-effective, accountable, and transparent American foreign assistance. At every level of the program, we use data to increase program effectiveness, efficiency, and performance with geographic and epidemiological focus; mobilize increased resources and critical policies for impact among partner countries; support local partners for sustainable implementation; and validate outcomes, program costs, and results. For the past decade, this rigor has allowed PEPFAR to significantly expand our results [856 KB] and impact with little or no budget increase.

## Population-Based HIV Impact Assessments

PEPFAR remains a global leader in the use of granular data to drive health care results and increase impact, including through our pioneering use of large national household surveys – Population-Based HIV Impact Assessments (PHIAs) – to track progress and identify key gaps toward high-burden countries reaching epidemic control while triangulating survey findings with program data.

The PHIA results show that several PEPFAR-supported countries have either approached or exceeded the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) 90-90-90 targets for 2020. These countries have translated resources from PEPFAR and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria into highly impactful programs that transcend poverty and weak health systems to reach clients with critical HIV prevention and treatment services. The PHIA results [432 KB]  also remind us that progress toward achieving HIV/AIDS epidemic control requires not only a financial investment but also effective collaboration and mutual accountability between partner governments and communities. With this collaboration and accountability lacking, some countries are not making significant strides to ensure people are aware of their HIV status. Without a supportive partner country policy environment, U.S. government HIV investments cannot be as effective or efficient, thereby slowing or stalling progress.

PEPFAR is working with partner countries to urgently address these and other policy barriers in order to accelerate progress toward achieving HIV/AIDS epidemic control. All countries should rapidly adopt relevant World Health Organization policies and fully implement them at scale in order to address key impediments to health care access by the most vulnerable and poor, such as stigma and discrimination; formal and informal fees for health services; and sexual violence, including the alarming rates of violence faced by those aged 9-14 years.

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