Our Global Strategic Information unit along with the San Francisco Department of Public Health’s HIV Epidemiology section has created this free and publicly available toolbox to complement what we do every day: provide training, technical assistance and active mentoring in a variety of effective methodologies for domestic and international surveillance. Essential to our approach are surveillance tools that can be locally adapted and used to produce high-quality, user-friendly, practical, reliable and reproducible data that will inform policy and programs to improve the health of HIV-affected populations and reduce the spread of the virus.

This toolbox is for governments, nongovernmental organizations, and private researchers who wish to implement IBBS surveys for key populations at higher risk for HIV infection. The toolbox features two methods

Time location sampling (TLS)
Respondent-driven sampling (RDS)

These methods focus on three key populations at higher risk for HIV infection

Female sex workers (FSW)
Men who have sex with men (MSM)
Persons who inject drugs (PWID)

However, these tools are easily adaptable for other sampling designs as appropriate. This toolbox is complete with everything you would need to implement a survey. These documents are based on our years of experience implementing IBBS worldwide, including San Francisco, CA; eight countries in Africa; Brazil; China and the Caribbean.

By downloading any of these documents, you agree to our Terms of Use.

Introduction

How to use this Toolbox (PDF)

Getting Started

Formative Assessment

Field Implementation

Using Results

The last step is to use the findings to determine what interventions are best suited to the needs of the key population.

Lessons Learned

Please visit our compilation of lessons learned from past surveys for further pointers.