What Determines HIV Prevention Costs at Scale?
2016
Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) prevention services for key populations are commonly delivered through NGOs. However, funding for HIV prevention remains scarce, and there are growing calls internationally to improve the efficiency of HIV prevention programmes as a key strategy to reach global HIV targets. To date, there is limited evidence on the determinants of costs of HIV prevention delivered through NGOs, and thus, policymakers have little guidance in how best to design programmes that are both effective and efficient.
The authors collected economic costs from the Indian Avahan initiative, the largest HIV prevention project conducted globally, during the first 4 years of its implementation. They used a fixed-effect panel estimator and a random-intercept model to investigate the determinants of average cost. They found that programme design choices such as NGO scale, the extent of community involvement, the way in which support is offered to NGOs and how clinical services are organized substantially impact average cost in a grant-based payment setting.
What Determines HIV Prevention Costs at Scale?
Source:
Lépine A, Chandrashekar S, Shetty G et al. What Determines HIV Prevention Costs at Scale? Evidence from the Avahan Programme in India. Health Economics 2016, 25: 67–82. https://doi.org/10.1002/hec.3296