HISTORY

PEPFAR and other donors recognized the need to coordinate and align their investments, frameworks, and strategies to maximize the impact in the countries they support. Initiated by PEPFAR, the Data Use Community started as a team addressing an integrated HIV case identification and surveillance system. The goal for the initial team was to provide considerations for an integrated approach that supports HIV case-based surveillance, recent infection surveillance, unique means of identifying persons within HIV surveillance, and programmatic monitoring.

The lack of standardization in systems and sometimes unrealistic expectations of data and systems are making it difficult to move the needle on several diseases, especially on the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Disparate data formats and systems in each country are also barriers to using data to drive programmatic impact. This requires access to and use of longitudinal patient data to drive programmatic impact.

The work done in this group culminated in producing part of the PEPFAR Country Operational Plan 2020 titled, “Impact-Driven Information Systems and Data Management Investment.” The DUC-related portion starts on page 360.