Five Year Caribbean Project Strengthens HIV Training Network

In the Caribbean region, AIDS is the leading cause of death among 15- to 44-year-olds. With 20,000 new HIV infections per year, there is an urgent need to provide quality care and treatment across a region that spans dozens of national borders.

I-TECH has recently completed a five-and-a-half year project, funded by the US Agency for International Development (USAID), to strengthen the Caribbean Regional HIV/AIDS Training Network (CHART); a cornerstone of the region's efforts to bolster HIV health care service delivery. CHART is a unique multi-country network of training centers in Jamaica, Haiti, the Bahamas, Barbados, and Trinidad and Tobago, and a Regional Coordinating Unit based at the University of the West Indies in Jamaica. The centers offer curriculum development and training on HIV care and provide technical resources to support each country to design and manage its HIV care program.

"In supporting the development of CHART, I-TECH drew deeply on its own roots in the US AIDS Education and Training Centers, which are a similar network of centers in the United States," says Ann Downer, Executive Director of I-TECH. "Our task was to support CHART in becoming a sustainable organization with strong technical capacity."

With I-TECH support, the CHART Network has held strategic planning exercises; built governance structures; developed new technical capacities in monitoring and evaluation, curriculum development, training program planning, and training; and matured as an organization.

From 2004, when the network held 77 training sessions, the number of trainings per year has grown. By its fifth year, CHART held 233 sessions. In addition, the network has developed and trained a cadre of 641 trainers, an important objective that supports project sustainability into the future.

“This I-TECH project provided valuable technical assistance to CHART and the Caribbean region, but it also provided important lessons for our organization in the practice of capacity development," adds Downer. “In many ways, the project was ahead of its time. As PEPFAR shifts its worldwide emphasis towards capacity-development projects, these five years in the Caribbean stand out as a model. It's an example of how an American university can provide a deep level of technical assistance with a strategy for reducing its role over time. With CHART, there is now a strong, sustainable local organization to serve on the front lines of local health systems strengthening."

While USAID funding for the project ended in March 2010, funding through the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) continues. A regional leader in strengthening human resources for health, CHART is well positioned to partner with regional and international health institutions in the areas of workforce planning, deployment, recruitment, and retention and training of health care workers. In addition, CHART will focus on monitoring and evaluating the outcomes of its interventions, to learn about the impact they are having on health service delivery in the region. I-TECH will continue to support CHART in institutional capacity building this year as it transitions toward being the recipient of direct funding in the near future.

Learn more about the Caribbean Regional HIV/AIDS Training Network at the CHART website at http://www.chartcaribbean.org