Thai Red Cross AIDS Research Centre, Thailand Performance Report FY19Q3

The project is a collaboration between the Thai Red Cross AIDS Research Centre and three community-based organizations, with the support of the U.S. President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR). The project's goal is to build the capacity of community-based organizations to provide high-quality key population-led health services. During the reporting period, the project continued to accelerate implementation under three key strategic objectives. The first objective is to build the capacity of community health workers to provide quality key population-led health services. The project provided seven trainings during the quarter, including HIV counseling, PrEP dispensing, and ARV dispensing for CBO staff under LINKAGES. The project also developed training materials for the curriculum on HIV and STI testing, which were used for training CBO staff under LINKAGES in June. The second objective is to establish certification systems that allow community-based organizations to secure public-sector endorsement of key population-led health services. The project continued to follow up with each community-based organization on how community health workers have been coached and how they practiced in preparing for the certification assessment. The certification system was also introduced to the Raks Thai Foundation to implement with CBO staff under the GF-STAR project. The third objective is to mobilize and leverage resources to sustain the technical assistance platform. The project engaged in intensive advocacy for policy change and establishing a certification system and legal status for community health workers with the Department of Disease Control of the Ministry of Public Health. As a result, the ministerial regulation to allow community health workers to provide HIV services under supervision of health professionals was formally endorsed by the Minister of Public Health and officially announced in the Government Gazette in June 2019. The project also promoted and branded the technical assistance platform through different meetings with key potential resources at the central and provincial level. In addition, the project was granted an additional 648,000 THB from Raks Thai Foundation to train two more groups of staff from CBOs under the GF-STAR project in June. The MAC AIDS Fund also granted 25,000 USD to support the project for building capacity of the network of people living with HIV in Thailand. The project's capacity-building efforts and certification system are in line with the national system. The project will continue to work with the Department of Disease Control to ensure that the capacity-building efforts and certification system are aligned with the national system. The project also presented its outcomes at an international conference, with an abstract for integrated approaches for task shifting in Thailand accepted as a poster presentation at the 4th Asia Pacific AIDS & Co-infections Conference in Hong Kong. The project's achievements are presented by each strategic objective. Under the first objective, the project used the key population-led health services curricula to further organize the training for CBO staff under LINKAGES and GF-STAR. The curricula have been further transformed into modules for e-learning to support refresher training for those community health workers trained in the classroom. However, the remaining planned module on HIV and STI testing is still under development. The project also worked with LINKAGES in developing the training content and slide presentation for index testing, used them to train CBO staff under LINKAGES during June 2-4, 2019. This content and slide presentation are to be further developed into a course for use with key population-led health services in the future. The project has been in continuous communication with LINKAGES and the Foundation for AIDS Rights to revise the training content from the course on stigma and discrimination in key population-led health services, developed and organized by FAR, to tailor it to the needs of community health centers and key population-led health services outlets. The project continued to build the capacity of community health workers to enable them to provide quality key population-led health services. Seven trainings were conducted during the quarter, including HIV counseling, PrEP dispensing, and ARV dispensing for CBO staff under LINKAGES. The project also conducted a training on HIV counseling for CBOs under LINKAGES, which was conducted to support CBO staff under LINKAGES who did not attend the HIV counseling training in Project Year I. The training evaluation results show that the participants were highly satisfied with the training content and delivery. The post-test scores show that there was a significant increase in knowledge from the pre- to the post-test.