Community-Led Monitoring (CLM) of HIV Services in Sierra Leone

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This notice announces the opportunity to apply for funding under the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) Community-Led Monitoring (CLM) of HIV Services in Sierra Leone. The purpose of this program is to use standardized data collection tools to conduct CLM of HIV services in approximately 30 PEPFAR service sites in Sierra Leone for dissemination throughout the country to promote improvements in the national HIV response. This CLM program will use client feedback collected by trained community members in order to improve performance of PEPFAR service delivery. Areas of focus include HIV prevention services, testing services, treatment services (including linkage, retention, and viral load testing), service provider perceptions, attitudes, practices, and client satisfaction with services provided. The recipient will present and analyze data in close collaboration with community representatives, healthcare providers, clients, government stakeholders, and facility managers to ensure dialogue and participation in identifying improvement opportunities, and implementing and monitoring solutions. Specifically, PEPFAR intends to utilize this program to focus on getting input from recipients of HIV services, especially key populations and underserved groups, in a routine and systematic manner that will translate into action and change. The goal of this program is to improve HIV care and services for a better client experience, and, ultimately, improve health outcomes through PEPFAR site and service monitoring. The objective of the program is to develop and conduct an assessment and reporting CLM system that reflects clients’ experience in receiving quality HIV services in Sierra Leone and support stakeholder analysis with actionable insights. Given the low overall national prevalence of HIV in Sierra Leone, the PEPFAR program focuses on key and priority Populations. At sites where PEPFAR is providing support, CLM extends to all people living with HIV (PLHIV) and for any individual seeking HIV prevention and testing services. The CLM program in Sierra Leone will give voice to those individual community members PEPFAR serves, to strengthen the quality of service provision by ensuring feedback from PLHIV is captured and used to enhance program quality. The CLM program will provide a clear description of challenges using quantitative and qualitative data to identify areas that need improvement across the HIV continuum of care, as well as areas that are of good quality. Monitoring efforts will include PEPFAR’s minimum program requirements (MPR) as applicable. Collection of monitoring data should be triangulated with, but not duplicative of, other PEPFAR data streams. Per PEPFAR, CLM data should reflect an ‘added value’ and not duplicate collection of routine data already available to PEPFAR. ‘Added value’ monitoring data includes: information from beneficiaries about their experience with the health facility, information about barriers and enablers to access and retention in services, etc. Finally, this program will engage with in-country stakeholders to identify and support sustainable solutions that improve client care. Engagement will include discussions with government and non-government stakeholders at all levels to promote improvement of the patient experience.

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