Role of faith communities in ending AIDS in children and adolescents.

UNAIDS and PEPFAR have co-published a compendium that documents 41 promising practices of faith communities in identifying undiagnosed children; improving continuity of treatment, supporting adolescents to access psychosocial support, care and treatment, and enabling peer support groups

Faith communities and faith-based organizations have a long history of caring for children and adolescents living with and affected by HIV.

However, these efforts have not been well-documented and hence their contributions have not been well understood nor resourced. Until now.

UNAIDS and PEPFAR have co-published the Compendium of Promising Practices on the Role of African Faith Community Interventions to End Pediatric and Adolescent HIV which goes a long way to addressing this dearth of information.

The Compendium documents 41 promising practices that provide evidence of the core roles that faith communities have played in identifying undiagnosed children living with HIV, improving continuity of treatment, supporting adolescents to access psychosocial support, care and treatment, and enabling peer support groups to empower children and adolescents living with HIV.

It also documents how faith leaders have driven advocacy to tackle stigma and discrimination and pushed governments for targets to be achieved. Some specific promising practices include:

In Zambia, by expanding integrated health service delivery through Health Posts within places of worship, more children were identified when tested for HIV in faith community sites compared with those tested in non-faith community sites, averaging 15% and 7%, respectively, for the semi-annual period in the 2021 Financial Year.

In Nigeria, a congregation-based approach to HIV testing in pregnant women, using Baby Showers, found the intervention improved HIV testing among pregnant women (with 93% linkage) and their male partners, who were 12 times more likely to know their status, compared with partners of women giving birth who had not participated in the intervention.

Religious leaders and faith-based organizations in several countries have enrolled as Faith Pediatric Champions and have strengthened community engagement through teams sometimes - Christian and Muslim - including religious leaders, youth leaders, as well as men's and women's group leaders.

Faith Pediatric Champions have advocated to...