Modeling DREAMS impact: trends in new HIV diagnoses among women attending antenatal care clinics in DREAMS countries

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  • Janet Saul
  • Caroline Cooney
  • Parviez R. Hosseini
  • Ta'Adhmeeka Beamon
  • Nora Toiv
  • Bhatt, Samir
  • Irum Zaidi
  • Deborah Birx

Objectives: To understand the impact of United States President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR’s) DREAMS (Determined, Resilient, Empowered, AIDS-Free, Mentored, and Safe) Partnership on new HIV diagnoses among women in antenatal care (ANC) settings in 10 African countries from 2015 to 2020. Design: We modeled spatiotemporal changes in new HIV diagnoses among women in ANC settings using PEPFAR data. Statistical tests were performed in R to compare differences in new diagnoses rates between DREAMS and non-DREAMS subnational units (SNUs) and to explore predictors of new diagnoses declines within DREAMS SNUs. Methods: We used a predictive geospatial model to forecast the rate of new diagnoses for each time period in a 5 km grid cell (n ¼ 861 SNUs). Linear model analyses were conducted using predictor variables: urbanicity, DREAMS geographic footprint, ‘layering’ proxy, and community-level male viral load suppression. Results: New HIV diagnoses in ANC from 2015 to 2020 declined in nearly all SNUs. ‘Always’ DREAMS SNUs reported declines of 45% while ‘Never’ DREAMS SNUs reported a decline of only 37% (F ¼ 8.1, 1 and 829 DF, P < 0.01). Within Always DREAMS SNUs, greater declines were seen in areas with a higher number of minimum services in their DREAMS primary package (t ¼ 2.77, P < 0.01). Conclusion: New HIV diagnoses among women are declining in both DREAMS and non-DREAMS SNUs; mirroring HIV incidence decreases and reflecting increasing community viral load suppression and voluntary male medical circumcision rates. DREAMS programming may have contributed to accelerated declines of new HIV diagnoses in DREAMS SNUs compared with non-DREAMS SNUs. Increased progress is needed to further reduce the disparities between adolescent girls and young women (AGYW) and young men to achieve epidemic control.

Original languageEnglish
JournalAIDS
Volume36
Pages (from-to)S51-S59
Number of pages9
ISSN0269-9370
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2022

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
Financial support: this project has been supported by the United States President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief.

Funding Information:
The authors thank all those who contributed to this endeavor and without whom DREAMS would not have been possible, including our government colleagues, PEPFAR country teams, and implementing partners in all 15 DREAMS countries. We thank the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation for their support of DREAMS implementation science and impact evaluation through Population Council and London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, as well as the sponsorship of this special issue. We also thank our other global DREAMS partners for their contributions to DREAMS planning, programming, and innovation – Gilead Sciences, Girl Effect, Johnson & Johnson, and Viiv Healthcare. We especially thank the adolescent girls and young women and their communities who dedicate their time and overcome great barriers to partner with DREAMS. We extend special thanks to AGYW who serve as mentors and DREAMS ambassadors to keep our programming responsive to the needs of their peers. We would also like to thank UNAIDS for providing detailed PSNU level data on the latest official estimates of PWH. This work was made possible by the generous support of the President's Emergency Fund for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) as implemented through the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD), and Peace Corps.

Funding Information:
Financial support: this project has been supported by the United States President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief.

Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 The Author(s).

    Research areas

  • adolescent girls, HIV, modelling, prevention, young women

ID: 385516621