Quarterly Report FY 2014 Q1 LIFT II

Agency for International Development (USAID) Office of HIV and AIDS (OHA) under Cooperative Agreement No. AID-OAA-LA-13-00006. LIFT II was launched August 1, 2013, as a five-year associate award under the Financial Integration, Economic Leveraging, Broad-Based Dissemination and Support (FIELD-Support) Leaders with Associates (LWA). LIFT II is managed and led by FHI 360 and implemented with support from CARE International (CARE) and World Vision (WV). The project aims to foster a systemic approach that connects people living with HIV and AIDS (PLHIV) to economic strengthening, livelihoods, and food security (ES/L/FS) services at the community level. Under the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), the incidence of new HIV infections continues to decline, and antiretroviral therapy (ART) has become more widely available. However, ART provision has created more pressures for governments and communities with already scarce resources to provide ongoing care and support. LIFT II will continue to address the impact of HIV on people's livelihoods and food security, especially in countries with both high HIV prevalence and high rates of malnutrition. LIFT II will expand its working model activities initiated under LIFT I by systematically linking nutrition assessment, counseling, and support (NACS) clients with community services. The working model will be strengthened and rolled out in different countries and settings to provide evidence-based, gender-sensitive programming to improve household access to ES/L/FS support into the continuum of care. The roll-out of the working model will occur at several early learning sites in coordination with national and subnational government and partners. The LIFT II technical assistance (TA) activities will meet four key objectives: 1) Improved access to ES/L/FS services for clinical health and NACS clients and families, through referrals and community support services; 2) Strengthened community services that provide ES/L/FS support as a component of a continuum of care for families; 3) Expanded evidence base for ES/L/FS programming impacts on health and nutrition, particularly with regard to retention in care, replicability, implementation at scale, cost-effectiveness, and sustainability; and 4) Provision of global technical leadership and strategic support to improve the quality of ES/L/FS programs and activities that support PEPFAR, Global Health Initiative (GHI), and Feed the Future (FTF) investments. In the previous quarter, the LIFT II team had many accomplishments, including the increased documentation of the rollout procedure, increased collaboration with other global projects, and implementation of the LIFT model in new contexts. The global interest for increasing integration of services across health and economic spheres requires the development of processes describing how to refer clients between these services. The LIFT II team began addressing this gap by developing two documents: 1) Referral Network Operations Manual, and 2) Referral Network Training Manual. The documents will guide the roll-out of the LIFT II model and provide structure to this process for other practitioners. The LIFT II project is currently being implemented in several countries, including the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Malawi, Nigeria, Tanzania, Namibia, and Zambia. The project aims to improve the overall food, nutritional, and economic security of PLHIV and their families, while strengthening adherence and retention in care. The project's technical assistance activities will focus on improving access to ES/L/FS services, strengthening community services, expanding the evidence base for ES/L/FS programming, and providing global technical leadership and strategic support. The LIFT II project has made significant progress in the first quarter of FY 2014, including the development of the Referral Network Operations Manual and the Referral Network Training Manual. The project has also increased collaboration with other global projects and implemented the LIFT model in new contexts. The project's early learning sites are being used as essential learning laboratories to provide important evidence to inform scale-up and integration of ES/L/FS into NACS.