EpiC Vietnam's CLA Approach to Strengthen Local Ownership and Sustainable HIV Services

The Meeting Targets and Maintaining Epidemic Control (EpiC) project in Vietnam launched a collaborating, learning, and adapting (CLA) approach to build local ownership and the sustainability of HIV services in response to decreasing donor support. EpiC first created an internal culture of CLA through the development of structured pause and reflect sessions that cut across several technical domains. Because the project primarily works through sub agreements with six provincial departments of health or centers for disease control, it was also critical to build CLA teams within each province. CLA champions were identified in each province and tasked with convening pause and reflect sessions that built a network of provincial, site, and community leaders to review data, identify areas for improvement, and use that data to adaptively manage their HIV program on a routine basis. This process is driven by leaders from each province, supported by an EpiC CLA Advisor and an EpiC provincial focal point. In parallel, EpiC worked with provinces to develop a systematic process for collecting client feedback, integrating it into the CLA process.

Since launching in mid-2020, provincial authorities and the project team now tailor services to client preferences, use adaptive management to respond to challenges (like COVID-19), and utilize data as the foundation for decision making. This has helped partners and the project reach HIV epidemic control targets.