Behavioural Surveillance Surveys - The Wisdom of Whores

Finally, information about HIV and the
behaviors that spread it should be fed back to
the communities from which the information
was collected, to enable community members
to make informed choices about HIV
prevention measures both at a personal and
at a community level.
A strategy for presenting data
Data use must be planned for at the start
of any surveillance exercise in order to ensure
that all the data likely to be relevant to key
decision-makers are collected. But a strategy
for packaging and presenting data to the
relevant audiences should also be planned for
from the start.
Ideally, a country will have developed a
data dissemination plan as part of its overall
framework for the monitoring and evaluation
of the national response to HIV. This plan
should specify the contribution of all the
different actors in surveillance, monitoring and
evaluation. The role of different groups in
packaging and disseminating information,
including information generated by BSS, should
be specified in this plan. It should also include
mechanisms for data sharing between groups
involved in HIV prevention and care work.
The roles and responsibilities of different
groups will vary by country. The institution
actually undertaking BSS data collection and
analysis will at a minimum be required to
produce a full technical report of the BSS
results. Data analysts may also be called upon
to do additional analysis not included in the
general report in order to meet the needs of
particular data users.
The packaging of data for different users
and the active lobbying of these users may
be the responsibility of surveillance managers,
or may fall elsewhere within the national
structure (it may, for example, lie with a
multisectoral AIDS committee). Whoever is
responsible must certainly have access to
more than just the BSS data.
A key consideration is speed. Data from
BSS or other sources should be presented as
soon as possible after it has been collected.
This may entail publishing preliminary results
for key indicators in a summary report within
a month or two of data collection, while data
analysis is continuing. A full report can be
published once data analysis is complete.
Essential “products” of BSS and HIV
surveillance systems
A country may decide to divide up
responsibilities for data use in different ways.
However most data use strategies should
include a number of basic “products” derived
from the information collected. Most of these
will be produced at least annually. They include:
1. A full technical report of the sentinel
surveillance systems for HIV and STDs.
2. A full technical report of the behavioral
surveillance system.
3. A non-technical review of the national HIV
epidemic, combining data from the technical
reports as well as other sources such as
academic studies.
4. A one or two page press release focusing
on the main findings of the BSS and HIV
sentinel surveillance systems, to accompany
the release of the non-technical report.
B EHAV I OR A L S U R V EI L L A NC E SURV EY S CHAPTER 8
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