PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Audrey E Pettifor
AU  - Catherine MacPhail
AU  - Stefano Bertozzi
AU  - Helen V Rees
TI  - Challenge of evaluating a national HIV prevention programme: the case of loveLife, South Africa
AID  - 10.1136/sti.2006.023689
DP  - 2007 Aug 01
TA  - Sexually Transmitted Infections
PG  - i70--i74
VI  - 83
IP  - suppl 1
4099  - http://sti.bmj.com/content/83/suppl_1/i70.short
4100  - http://sti.bmj.com/content/83/suppl_1/i70.full
SO  - Sex Transm Infect2007 Aug 01; 83
AB  - Although 50% of all new global HIV infections occur among young people, our knowledge to date of the impact of adolescent HIV prevention interventions in developing country settings is limited. During 1999, a national HIV prevention programme for youth, called loveLife, was launched in South Africa. This paper describes the challenges faced in trying to evaluate such a national programme and the types of evidence that could be used to better understand the effect of programmes of national scale. A range of methods were planned to evaluate the programme, including national household surveys and programme monitoring data. Given the urgent need to scale-up programmes in an effort to reduce new HIV infections, a range of evidence should be assessed to measure the effect of large-scale, complex behavioural interventions as an alternative to randomised controlled trials.