Women's HIV Prevention Tracking Project (WHiPT)

The Women's HIV Prevention Tracking Project originated as a collaboration with AVAC, the ATHENA Network and organizations based in Kenya, Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland and Uganda. The focus was on documenting women's perceptions of and priorities about voluntary medical male circumcision as it was introduced in their communities and countries. The WHiPT team developed and implemented evidence-gathering tools for informing and engaging grassroots women. This work led to the project’s first report, Making Medical Male Circumcision Work for Women, which is based on input from approximately 500 women in urban and rural settings and in communities with and without traditional circumcision practices. In follow-up projects, country teams acted on their findings with context-specific advocacy strategies.

AVAC is working with partners to develop and adapt the WHiPT approach to evidence-based advocacy for work on other issues--particularly focusing on women's prevention strategies such as microbicides and on the gender dimensions of strategies such as treatment as prevention, PrEP and VMMC.