Feature - Jhpiego and CDC discuss collaborative efforts in global AIDS program

On Thursday, 16 March 2006, Jhpiego welcomed our colleagues from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Cheryl Mayo and Edmund Gumisiriza, to share in discussions on the collaborative efforts in the Global AIDS Program funded by the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR). Ms. Mayo and Mr. Gumisiriza are both Training Specialists from the Global AIDS Program Training Unit. Jhpiego leads the Johns Hopkins University consortium for the CDC’s University Technical Assistance Projects (UTAP), which supports the Global AIDS Program. The consortium includes the JHU Schools of Medicine, Nursing and Public Health.

The meetings created a forum to discuss current efforts, including program approaches, best practices and future directions for UTAP. Ms. Mayo also presented Jhpiego staff with an overview of the PEPFAR and CDC/Global AIDS Program training initiative. To meet the high demand for trained health care professionals in low-resource areas, the Training Team works to build sustainable training systems that are innovative and effective.

This unique program takes into account the circumstances of the individual countries in which they operate and the factors that influence and motivate the professionals being trained. One of the greatest challenges is creating a universal training module that all organizations use to ensure continuity of message and method delivery. The overall goal is to promote global health and quality HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria services to the thousands of people around the world who are newly infected with these deadly diseases every day.

Through the 5-year cooperative agreement, the Jhpiego/JHU team provides the full-range of HIV/AIDS technical services to CDC internationally. In addition to our primary efforts in counseling and testing and preventing mother-to-child transmission of HIV, Jhpiego/JHU has made available to CDC missions its skills in monitoring and evaluation, as well as program design, management and implementation.

About Jhpiego
For nearly 40 years, Jhpiego, (pronounced "ja-pie-go"), has empowered front-line health workers by designing and implementing simple, low-cost, hands-on solutions that strengthen the delivery of health care services, following the household-to-hospital continuum of care. We partner with community- to national-level organizations to build sustainable, local capacity through advocacy, policy and guidelines development, and quality and performance improvement approaches.