Peer Education and HIV/AIDS: Past Experience, Future Directions

"Worldwide, peer education is one of the most widely used strategies to address the HIV/AIDS pandemic. Despite its popularity, there has been little documentation and analysis of the operational issues facing peer education program managers." Published in 1999, this report presents findings from a participatory global project designed to better understand these issues in order to inform policies and programmes related to HIV prevention and the care and support of people living with HIV/AIDS (PLHA). The project was coordinated by UNAIDS and the Horizons Project, and implemented in conjunction with the Jamaican Ministry of Health, Program for Appropriate Technology in Health (PATH), AIDSMark/Population Services International (PSI), IMPACT/Family Health International (FHI), and USAID. The project set out to gather information from research and field experience to help strengthen peer education programmes; what emerged were suggestions specific to peer education as well as those that may have broader applications to other types of programmes.

This report emerged from an international consultation of 45 experts that was held as part of this project (April 18-21 1999 - Kingston, Jamaica). Participants included peer education programme managers, peer educators, donors, and researchers representing Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, North America, and Europe. The report identifies peer education programme components and principles that influence quality and effectiveness, as well as operations research gaps and priorities. It provides an analysis of the strengths and limitations of peer education gleaned from a needs assessment of peer education programme managers, as well as a literature review on the 9 key topics identified by needs assessment participants. Key findings and recommendations from the consultation on these 9 topics are offered in the resource; the topics include:

1. Integration of HIV/AIDS Peer Education with Other Interventions
2. Finding and Keeping Peer Educators
3. Training and Supervising Peer Educators
4. Gender, Sexuality, and the Sociocultural Context
5. Program Activities to Foster Behavior Change
6. Care for People Living with HIV/AIDS
7. Stakeholders
8. Program Sustainability
9. Evaluation and Operations Research

"Bringing together representatives from a wide range of peer education programmes enabled consultation participants to share ideas across continents and cultures, deepen their understanding of critical programmatic issues, and affirm what they are doing well and what they need to do to strengthen their programmes. Programme managers and peer educators alike stated their commitment to broadening peer education from a strategy that focuses on providing information to one that addresses the diversity of determinants of behaviour change through expanded dialogue, community mobilization, policy advocacy, and the provision of HIV- related services." To support continued collaboration around issues of peer education for improved health, Appendix 2 includes contact information for each of the consultation participants (alphabetically by region and country).