Friendly HIV services for young key populations in Bandung, Indonesia

The project brought together stakeholders to design and implement a pilot project to increase testing, treatment, adherence, and to decrease new HIV infections among Young Key Populations in Bandung.

22 October 2014 - 31 December 2015

Burnet conducted a background review of Guidelines for Key Populations, and worked with Indonesian partners to adapt these for the local context. Burnet then brought together young key populations, health staff, policy makers and researchers.

We worked together over two weeks to improve understanding of issues, develop ideas, and then develop a Programme Framework. This brought together improved methods for HIV prevention, promotion and access to testing and treatment, improvement of Youth Friendly Services, and a Monitoring and Evaluation Framework.

Later, Burnet conducted training on Youth Friendly Health Clinics. This brought together health staff and young people, to learn more about each other and how to meet the health needs of the young people. Then, Burnet worked with the University of Padjajaran (UNPAD) to conduct baseline research, using qualitative and quantitative methods.

Partners developed a website, including interactive maps and chat rooms. They gave the project the title, LOLIPOP: Linkages of quality care for young key populations. Facebook site: https://www.facebook.com/The-HIV-Lolipop-Project-Indonesia-1594913080773041/ (Main site not accessible outside Indonesia).

The project was short term, for just one year. It was decided that it would be too early to conduct a mid-term research to indicate success. The project will continue, with partners receiving funding from other sources. It will also be expanded to three other sites in Indonesia: Jakarta, Bali and Surabaya.

Qualitative research in the last month sought feedback from national policy makers, health service providers, outreach workers and a separate group of adolescents from the key populations. This indicated that Outreach had increased, prevention methods had improved, the website was useful to help people find where to seek friendly health services, and that they now know the services are friendly, that this had resulted in improved access to MMT for people who inject drugs, that mobile testing services had expanded, and that both health workers and young people found that involvement in the project had been friendly and happy for all of them.