The OPTIMIZE project is dedicated to rapidly improving treatment outcomes for people living with HIV by optimizing antiretroviral drugs and formulations, and accelerating their introduction in low- and middle-income countries, including Kenya. (funded by USAID)

Find out more at https://optimize.icap.columbia.edu

The HIV Coverage, Quality, and Impact Network (CQUIN) is a multi-country learning network designed to accelerate the implementation of high-quality differentiated service delivery for HIV. CQUIN’s goal is to increase the number of people living with HIV initiating and sustaining highly effective HIV treatment with sustained viral suppression.

Find out more at cquin.icap.columbia.edu

ICAP is partnering with the MOH to design and implement a package of services for HIV-positive pregnant adolescents within the antenatal care setting and evaluate retention using data collected during routine care.

To improve HIV testing and access to treatment, ICAP is supporting the implementation and evaluation of a Test and Start strategy for adults, adolescents, and children. ICAP is supporting MOH teams and other stakeholders to implement interventions throughout the care cascade in order to improve case identification, linkages to care, early ART initiation, and retention in treatment. (funded by PEPFAR through the CDC)

ICAP is conducting formative research to inform the design and implementation of combination prevention interventions, including pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) for female sex workers, as well as to inform recruitment and retention strategies for female sex workers and their male clients in Kenya.

ICAP is conducting formative research with men living with HIV and health care workers who provide care to this population to better understand their perceptions of barriers and facilitators to engaging men in HIV care.  

The PHIA Project (population-based HIV impact assessments), led by ICAP and its partners, is a multi-country initiative to measure the reach and impact of HIV programs in PEPFAR-supported countries and guide policy and funding priorities.

Find out more at phia.icap.columbia.edu

Through the Quality Improvement Capacity for Impact Project (QICIP), ICAP provides ministries of health and local partners with technical assistance that enables them to monitor program performance, identify quality challenges, explore root causes, develop targeted interventions, and conduct rapid, iterative tests of change in programs supported by PEPFAR.

This five-year cooperative agreement is funded by the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA).

The purpose of this project is to support Jaramogi Odinga Odinja Teaching and Referral Hospital (JOOTRH) to serve as a regional center of excellence that serves as a training center and e-learning hub, and provides comprehensive HIV prevention, care, and treatment services, medically-assisted therapy for people who inject drugs, and gender-based violence recovery services. 

Columbia University’s role in implementing PEPFAR began in 2003, when it received funding from the Global AIDS Program of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) under the University Technical Assistance Projects (UTAP) to support the development of important components of national HIV programs, including treatment protocols and training. In 2004, ICAP was founded and was awarded a new cooperative agreement from CDC under the PEPFAR framework, the Track 1.0 funding mechanism, to provide comprehensive HIV care and treatment in five countries: Kenya, Mozambique, Rwanda, South Africa, and Tanzania, with programming in Côte d’Ivoire, Ethiopia, and Nigeria subsequently added.

This initiative, the Multicountry Columbia Antiretroviral Program (MCAP), rapidly expanded programs for HIV care and ART by promoting early diagnosis of HIV infection, maintaining the health of those living with HIV, and preventing further transmission of HIV within the community. MCAP programming between 2004 and 2012, in addition to being focused on rapidly scaling up care and treatment in partnership with host-country governments, also emphasized the full continuum of HIV-related services, continued capacity building and health systems strengthening, and transition of operations to host governments and local nongovernmental organizations.

Find the MCAP End-of-Project Reports here.

The MTCT-Plus Initiative, the world’s first multi-country HIV treatment program, aimed to demonstrate to a disbelieving world that it was possible to provide care and antiretroviral (ARV) treatment in resource-limited settings, using programs to prevent mother-to-child transmission of HIV (PMTCT) as an entry point.

In December 2003, the MTCT-Plus Secretariat in New York (the precursor to ICAP, headed by ICAP’s Wafaa El-Sadr and Elaine Abrams) received its first grant from the new President’s Emergency Program For AIDS Relief (PEPFAR).

Four years later, the MTCT-Plus Initiative of Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health was providing HIV care and treatment for nearly 17,000 people at 14 sites in nine countries. MTCT-Plus received expansion funding from USAID in 2003 and 2006. By 2010, ICAP had provided HIV care and treatment to more than one million people.

Find the MTCT-Plus and MTCT-Plus Expansion reports here.

ICAP partnered with Kenya’s MOH at the national, regional, and county level to support and improve the response to the HIV epidemic in Kenya’s Eastern South and Nyanza regions. ICAP enhanced HIV prevention, care, and treatment efforts by expanding access to HIV services, including HIV testing, PMTCT, and voluntary medical male circumcision. ICAP initiatives increased access to ART considerably for both adults and children living with HIV, in part by expanding the capacity of Kenya’s health workers to initiate and manage HIV treatment. ICAP also strengthened the ability of Kenya’s MOH and county health management teams to collect accurate, consistent data, improve program monitoring and evaluation, and use high-quality data for continuous quality improvement. These combined efforts helped lay the foundation for reaching today’s goal of achieving epidemic control. (funded by PEPFAR through the CDC)

View the End-of-Project brief here

In September 2002, the Mailman School of Public Health (MSPH) at Columbia University (CU) entered into a Cooperative Agreement with the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) for the University Technical Assistance Projects (UTAP) in Support of the Global HIV/AIDS Program. Situated within ICAP, UTAP was originally envisioned as a single-country program for the provision of technical assistance, but rapidly grew to include long-term and short-term technical and administrative assistance to the national responses to HIV/AIDS in five countries: Mozambique, Rwanda, South Africa, Tanzania, and Zambia.

As the original UTAP project drew to a close and PEPFAR moved into its second phase—focused on sustainability—ICAP entered into several, follow-on Cooperative Agreements, called UTAP-2. Four were country-focused (in Côte d’Ivoire, Democratic Republic of Congo, Swaziland, and Tanzania) and the fifth—UTAP-2 Atlanta—became a flexible mechanism for providing a wide range of technical assistance and other support to PEPFAR countries. After beginning in 2009 as a means to help CDC conduct  surveillance training more efficiently through distance education, UTAP-2 Atlanta grew over the next six and a half years to comprise 11 distinct projects addressing needs and gaps in the HIV response and answering important research questions to inform the response going forward.

Find all UTAP and UTAP-2 resources here.