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The purpose of this Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) is to establish Phase 2 of the U.S.-South Africa Program for Collaborative Biomedical Research.  Research areas supported under this program include HIV/AIDS and HIV/AIDS-associated malignancies. The intent of this FOA is to foster, stimulate, and/or expand basic, translational, behavioral and applied research that will advance scientific discovery and engage U.S. and South African researchers working collaboratively in the areas of HIV/AIDS and HIV/AIDS-associated malignancies.  Proposed research should reflect the highest possible scientific standards, as well as shared interests, international and local public health needs and priorities, and involve mutually advantageous collaborations among institutions, including participating communities and other partners.  U.S. and South African investigators working in partnership will prepare and submit a single joint application.  Applications must include at least one PD/PI affiliated with the U.S. institution and a South African PD/PI from an eligible institution from South Africa.

CDC, in collaboration with the National AIDS Control Program/Department of AIDS Control, has successfully laid the foundation for quality standards and approaches within India's vast HIV laboratory network through a previous five-year laboratory strengthening funding opportunity announcement (FOA). Many achievements were made during the course of the five-year project period, including accreditation of national and state reference labs. This follow-on FOA is expected to build upon and sustain previous accomplishments through onsite mentoring and in service staff training with an eye to higher quality services and scale up. A plan will be developed to facilitate laboratory quality at the grassroots level for 12,000 + Integrated HIV Testing and Counseling Centers (ICTCs). This shall be done through trainer/mentor creation within the HIV laboratory network to assist peripheral laboratories in implementing minimum quality standards. Given its expanded technical assistance (TA) scope, it is also expected to build the capacity and assure quality in a phased manner for HIV related tests like CD4 enumeration, HIV viral load and STI through strengthening leadership and mentoring capacity within the laboratory network. Now in Phase IV of its HIV/AIDS response, the Government of India (GoI) is keen to address any gaps in testing coverage.

This project will provide professional and technical development for defense legal professionals that provide criminal legal aid services in Bangladesh and help develop the organizational capacity of government legal aid committees to improve access to justice for indigent Bangladeshis. The project will provide legal training for defense lawyers to enhance the quality of legal aid services and engage with government legal aid committees to develop strategic initiatives to improve public outreach capabilities, planning, administrative capacity, and coordination among government facilities and NGOs. The project will support efforts to counter violent extremism in Bangladesh through improving access to justice and formal mechanisms to air grievances.

The international community is committed to ending the AIDS epidemic by 2030 and achieving the following interim targets: 90 percent of people living with HIV (PLHIV) know their status, 90 percent of those with HIV are on treatment, and 90 percent of those on treatment are virally suppressed by 2020. As PEPFAR resources are limited, effective partnerships continue to be critical in ultimately achieving epidemic control. CDC has partnered with the WHO since the inception of PEPFAR, and is able to draw on the WHO’s comparative advantage to issue international health guidelines and standards. This NOFO will strengthen public health capacity and guidelines to fast track HIV programs down to the district level in PEPFAR supported countries to achieve the 90-90-90 targets and move towards ending the AIDS epidemic by 2030. Key areas of collaboration as guided by the Joint Strategic Framework on the WHO and PEPFAR cooperation on HIV/AIDS include: prevention, care and treatment scale up, integrated service delivery, strengthening health systems, strategic information, and country support.

The overall goal of this funding opportunity announcement (FOA) is to utilize a district model approach to scale-up HIV prevention and treatment interventions to create an AIDS free generation in four districts in Lesotho. This will be achieved by implementing interventions to expand coverage of provider-initiated testing and counseling (PITC) and linkage into care services and treatment; reduce the rate of mother to child transmission to less than 5% and keep the mother-baby pairs alive; increase coverage of HIV treatment both to reduce AIDS-related mortality and to enhance HIV prevention; ensure that all TB-HIV co-infected people are initiated on antiretroviral therapy (ART) and retained in care; and strengthen the capacity of District Health Management Teams (DHMT) to routinely deliver high quality HIV programs in each district. The goal and activities of this FOA are in alignment with the Lesotho National HIV/AIDS Strategic Plan (NSP) . The four service districts will be Leribe, Berea, Quithing, and Qacha's Nek, which have a combined estimated population of 750,000.

The purpose of this funding opportunity announcement (FOA) is to build on previous PEPFAR support under the HHS/CDC HIV treatment program to ensure continuity of comprehensive HIV/AIDS services to an existing pool of clients receiving HIV/AIDS care, support, and/or treatment in Côte d'Ivoire. The program will also continue moderate expansion of access to HIV/AIDS services while building the capacity of national structures and contributing to sustainable service delivery within the health sector in Côte d'Ivoire, with a primary focus of activities in northern regions

Mozambique is at a critical junction of controlling its HIV/AIDS epidemic in order to meet The Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) goal of 90-90-90 by 2020 and 95-95-95 by 2030. Reaching these goals not only requires robust clinical interventions, but simultaneously requires addressing social, cultural, and legal barriers that inhibit equal access to health services for all people living with and affected by HIV. This requires not only the training of those at a local level who interact with people living with HIV/AIDS (PLHIV) or other vulnerable populations but also building the capacity of civil society organizations that can assist with improving uptake of HIV services as well as improving retention and linkages. This NOFO will increase the availability, accessibility, acceptability, and quality of HIV services provided in health facilities or community level by implementing innovative activities that reduce stigma and discrimination, increase retention and linkages of HIV and TB services, improve health facilities’ redress mechanisms, optimize care for HIV and TB patients, and improve patient rights and access to quality services for PLHIV.

The purpose of this FOA is to stimulate research on interventions to reduce HIV/AIDS-associated stigma and its impact on the prevention and treatment of HIV/AIDS and on the quality of life of People Living with HIV/AIDS (PLWH). Specifically, this initiative will support research on a) novel stigma reduction interventions that link to increase in care-seeking behavior and/or decrease in transmission; b) reducing the impact of stigma on adolescent and/or youth health; c) strategies to cope with the complex burden of stigmatization due to HIV and one or more comorbidities/coinfections; d) reducing effects of stigma on and/or by family members or caregivers of PLWH; and e) innovative and improved stigma measurement in the context of implementation of an intervention. The overall goals are to understand how to reduce stigma as a factor in HIV transmission, to eliminate or mitigate the aspects of stigma that limit beneficial health outcomes for the infected and at-risk individuals and communities, and to initiate exploratory studies to determine the feasibility of stigma interventions related to HIV prevention, treatment and/or care in Low and Middle-Income Countries (LMICs).

This NOFO will support implementation and acceleration of comprehensive HIV prevention, care, and treatment programs for HIV/AIDS epidemic control in Fort Portal Region of Uganda. This will entail implementation of comprehensive HIV/AIDS services in line with the new WHO guidelines,including targeted HIV testing services (HTS) to find more people living with HIV (PLHIV), especially men and key and priority populations (KP/PP) through HIV care and treatment; TB/HIV prevention, diagnosis, and treatment;elimination of Mother-to-Child Transmission (eMTCT); Voluntary Medical Male Circumcision (VMMC); services for orphans and vulnerable children (OVC); and associated laboratory and strategic information (SI) services through a health systems strengthening approach. Additionally, the recipient will work closely with the Ministry of Health (MOH) to strengthen the technical capacity of regional structures and District Health Teams (DHTs) for an effective public health decentralized HIV/AIDS response. Expected outcomes include improved access,coverage, and quality of HIV services ensuring 90% of PLHIV know their status;90% of people diagnosed with HIV infection receive antiretroviral therapy (ART); and 90% of those on treatment are virally suppressed.

This NOFO builds upon the achievements so far made in strengthening the health systems ability to achieve HIV epidemic control in Ethiopia and supports the implementation of comprehensive HIV/AIDS programs in the four emerging regions focusing on priority scale-up and sustained sub-national units (SNUs). The recipient will also provide technical assistance (TA) to the Federal Ministry of Health (FMOH) and seven Regional Health Bureaus (RHBs) having direct awards with CDC - including two city administrations - and other government organizations as appropriate, with the ultimate goal of strengthening local ownership and attaining the UNAIDS 90-90-90 goals for epidemic control of HIV/AIDS. The recipient will ensure that adequate capacity is built at the RHB and lower SNU levels for a gradual transition of activities considered to be matured, including site-level activities implemented in the four emerging regions. The nature of TA during the 5 year project period may change depending on program dynamics and readiness of organizations in the emerging regions as well as TA recipients. The recipient will also be engaged in planning and rolling-out support of new US and host government initiatives and interventions developed to improve performance and achieve targets set to achieve epidemic control in top priority SNUs.

India is home to the third largest number of people living with HIV/AIDS (PLWH) in the world. There are an estimated 2.09 million people living with HIV. The Government of India (GoI) has undertaken a robust scale up of its antiretroviral treatment (ART) program, starting from eight ART centers in 2004 to over 420 centers now in 2014. Currently, over 750,000 PLWH are on ART out of 1.1 million eligible for treatment. Despite scale up success, several challenges remain for the ART program to achieve the expansion it envisages over the next five years. These include human capacity issues, loss of patients from detection to enrollment in HIV care, and late HIV detection and retention. At every stage, over 200,000 patients are lost from testing to enrollment in care, to retention in care and then to treatment. Although progress has been made in the implementation of the HIV-TB program, there are several gaps that need to be addressed. The linkages between HIV/AIDS and the Revised National Tuberculosis Control Program (RNTCP) are suboptimal, particularly in northern states due to limited capacity and infrastructure. Only 61% (2014) of TB patients were screened for HIV and knew their HIV status in the last one year. Of those identified as HIV positive, 85% were linked to ART. However, the concern is that the referral from HIV testing and care facilities to RNTCP is quite low.

The HIV/AIDS epidemic in Central America (CA) is concentrated, with low prevalence among the adult population but high prevalence among key populations (KPs), including men who have sex with men (MSM), transgender (TG) women (male to female), sex workers (SW), and certain ethnic groups, such as the Garifuna. In alignment with the IOM's recommendations, as well as the Central America Partnership Framework (PF) and the Office of the Global AIDS Coordinator's (OGAC) "Sustainability Planning Guidance Document: Advancing Country Ownership in PEPFAR III," this FOA prioritizes support for concrete efforts that assist ministries of health (MOH) in Central America to lead, manage, coordinate, and implement national responses to their respective concentrated epidemics while sustaining programmatic quality and coverage goals. Funding will support regional activities in 2 geographic clusters: Cluster A (Guatemala, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica) and Cluster B (Belize, El Salvador, Honduras, and Panama). Applicants must submit a separate application and budget for each geographic area (Cluster) they intend to implement.Cluster A - Guatemala, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica:* Regional expansion and enhancement of the Sexually-transmitted Infection Sentinel Surveillance and Control Strategy (VICITS, by its Spanish acronym), an HIV combination prevention intervention that includes improved STI diagnosis and treatment, condom promotion and distribution, HIV counseling and testing (HCT), linkage to care, and a second-generation surveillance information system.

The United States Agency for International Development in India (USAID/India), is seeking concept/application for a cooperative agreement from qualified and eligible organizations to fund a program to rapidly demonstrate and assess efficient and effective models of HIV/AIDS services for key populations (KPs), their partners, spouses and children. This activity will rapidly demonstrate and assess new models to increase accessibility, availability, and demand of high quality, comprehensive HIV prevention, care and treatment services; while strengthening systems and the enabling environment for KPs, especially hard-to-reach KPs, their partners, spouses and children to have equitable access to HIV/AIDS and social services. The estimated level of funding for this results oriented assistance is estimated to be $20 million over 5 years.

This notice solicits applications for the Resilient and Responsive Health Systems (RRHS) Initiative - South Sudan, a multi-year program to strengthen human resources for health (HRH) to address public health challenges like HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis (TB) and malaria in South Sudan. This initiative also seeks to achieve health system resiliency by addressing fundamental health systems constraints that impede the availability of and access to quality health services by supporting the implementation of national health strategies and recovery plans to respond to emerging epidemics, prevent, manage and control HIV/AIDS, TB, malaria, and other communicable and non-communicable diseases, and improve population health outcomes.

The purpose of this announcement is to strengthen capacity of the Government of the Republic of Namibia through support for high-impact and evidence based interventions to prevent HIV transmission, increase access to quality HIV/AIDS care and support programs, strengthen the overall health system, and integrate HIV/AIDS programming with maternal and child healthcare, malaria, TB and other primary healthcare programs in an effective manner.

The purpose of this Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) is to increase the identification of HIV positive persons through targeted HIV counseling and testing (HCT), assist in spouse and child disclosure of HIV status, and improve linkage and enrollment of all newly identified HIV clients to HIV/AIDS care, treatment and support services. Linkage is defined as the process of identifying new HIV positive clients through a bidirectional relationship among index case testing service outlets and HIV/AIDS care and treatment facilities, enrolling newly diagnosed HIV clients into appropriate chronic care by using referral slip and/or escorting of all newly identified HIV clients to appropriate care, treatment and support services. The care and support services will serve to improve clients ART adherence, and overall quality of life of persons living with HIV (PLHIV) and their families. This in turn will reduce new HIV infections, improve the quality of life for PLHIVs, and mitigate the negative health, psychological, social, and economic impacts of HIV infection in the long term.

The purpose of this FOA is to provide technical assistance (TA) to the Government of Kenya (GOK) and implementing partners in strengthening their capacity to design and implement systems to collect, analyze, interpret and disseminate high quality HIV data. To achieve this, the awardee(s) will complete activities under the following program areas: Program Area A - Surveillance and Epidemiology: Support the GOK and its partners in strengthening their capacity to design, implement, analyze, disseminate, and use data from epidemiologic studies to adequately and accurately measure outcomes and impact, while informing decision making and policy in the national and sub-national HIV response. Epidemiologic studies will include surveillance, surveys, operations research/implementation science and public health impact evaluations. Program Area B - Monitoring and Evaluation: Strengthen the Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) capacity of health workers in program data collection, analysis and reporting as well as cohort analysis and program evaluation. The support will also include review, revision and roll out of M&E framework, tools, policies and standard operating procedures (SOPs), M&E coordination and collaboration at national and sub-national levels and support strengthening quality of HIV data through training and mentorship. Program Area C - mHealth: The third component will entail supporting the GOK units such as the National AIDS and STI Control Program (NASCOP), National Public Health Laboratory Services (NPHLS) and Kenya Medical Supplies Agency (KEMSA) in mobile technology innovations (mHealth) projects that leverage mobile technologies to enhance efficiencies in the delivery of prevention, care and treatment of HIV.

The purpose of this funding opportunity announcement (FOA) is to strengthen capabilities of the Ministry of Health (MOH) and District Health Teams (DHTs) to conduct the following activities: (1) monitoring and evaluation (M&E) of HIV program including service quality assessment, (2) district led HIV programming (DLP); (3) conducting population case-based surveillance, and lastly (4) strengthening the Ministry of Health (MOH)-owned national Health Management Information System (HMIS), to generate timely, valid, consistent and complete data. This FOA is part of the PEPFAR overall sustainability plan and transition of HIV/AIDS monitoring and evaluation into the primary national health care system towards alignment to the national HIV/AIDS M&E framework and achievement of one national M&E system. The FOA also supports the PEPFAR implementation of a sustainability plan and investments in public health systems, quality improvement, and public health workforce development. At the end of the project, the main expected outcomes include increased use of information for evidence-based decision making, effective health programming at the district levels, and a well-functioning Health Management Information System. All the data collection and reporting activities will emphasize maintaining patients' and participants' confidentiality by treating information that they disclose in a relationship of trust. All of the information provided by patients/participants will be kept confidential and secure in locked rooms/drawers with limited access. Any data analyses will be conducted after all personal identifying information have been removed from electronic datasets.

Local non-Governmental Partnerships for Sustained Country Leadership in Rwanda under President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR)

Local non-Governmental Partnerships for Sustained Country Leadership in Rwanda under President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR)

Improved Quality and Sustainability of Medication Assisted Treatment in Ukraine under the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR).