Recent advances in the global HIV response hold great promise for achieving control of the HIV epidemic. With support from the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), Project SOAR was a collaborative 6-year, 21-country implementation science initiative that generated critical evidence to inform and improve HIV prevention, care, and treatment policies and programs worldwide. The Council-led Project SOAR consisted of over 70 activities undertaken in collaboration with Avenir Health, Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation, Johns Hopkins University, Palladium, and The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
These activities examined strategies to effectively introduce HIV prevention interventions for young women and adolescents, increase voluntary medical male circumcision, improve early infant diagnosis of HIV, reduce harmful gender norms, strengthen the continuum of care of those living with HIV, address barriers to improve prevention and access to HIV services for key populations at elevated risk, and much more.
Through these studies, Project SOAR worked to:
- Produce a robust body of evidence to ensure that increasingly constrained resources are used efficiently and effectively to reach those most in need.
- Improve use of high-quality HIV services through adoption of best practices informed by SOAR’s operations research.
- Strengthen the capacity of local partners to set operations research agendas, conduct operations research, and use findings.
