Community COMPACT
Community COMPACT
Not-for-profit
Year launched: 2010Approach
Target geography
Target Population
Target income level
- Bottom 20%
Health focus
- HIV/AIDS
CHMI PLUS Status
Profile Completeness Rating
Monitoring & Evaluation Reporting
Summary
Community COMPACT seeks to prevent new HIV infections by increasing the number of individuals and couples who are aware of their status.The Centre for Infectious Disease Research in Zambia, a research, training, and service provision organisation, implements the program with funding from PEPFAR/CDC.Program goals
Community COMPACT is CIDRZ’s primary health promotion program.. This CDC/PEPFAR-funded community-led HIV prevention program seeks to prevent new HIV infections in two target communities – urban Kanyama in Lusaka Province and rural Kalabo in Western Province – by increasing the number of individuals and couples who are aware of their HIV status and access to HIV prevention, care and treatment information.
Previously, most HIV prevention programs were led by organisations or government ministries resulting in low uptake of counselling and testing services. COMPACT puts the community at the helm: target communities identified key drivers of HIV in their communities and take action to combat them.
Key program components
The Community COMPACT program engages individuals in the two target communities through:
- Training community volunteers in HIV/AIDS basics, prevention with positives, and psychosocial and couples counselling so they may support health centre-based voluntary counselling and testing departments
- Conducting voluntary HIV counselling and testing drives every quarter
- Distributing male and female condoms
- Providing information, education and communication materials and information sessions on the prevention and treatment of HIV, cervical cancer, and HIV/TB co-infection
The Community COMPACT program also measures how incorporating a community-wide incentive affects levels of community involvement in the program. In addition to identifying how to tackle HIV for their particular setting, the community also determines what community-oriented incentive they would like to receive for reaching their goal. Kanyama, in the Lusaka province, opted for improving sanitation, while Kalabo, in the Western Province, requested more counselling training and bicycles to improve outreach.
Project outcomes included the following:
- Development of community-led HIV prevention strategic plans
- Increased testing and counseling of couples in the community and provision of support
- Improved referral to HIV care and treatment for those who tested positive
- Increased access to voluntary medical male circumcision for men who tested negative
- Increased male involvement in antenatal care and prevention of mother-to-child-transmission
- Implementation of performance-based community compacts
Scale
Financials
Parent Organizations
- Centre for Infectious Disease Research in ZambiaNot-for-profit