The Blue Book is Here!

CDC and Partners Launch 2017 Biobehavioral Survey Guidelines

CDC’s Division of Global HIV & TB in collaboration with the World Health Organization (WHO), the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) and FHI 360 have launched the 2017 Biobehavioral Survey Guidelines for Populations at Risk for HIV, informally known as the Blue Book. These guidelines are a one-stop comprehensive resource for survey investigators, program planners, and policy makers working with key populations.

Key populations refer to groups who are disproportionately affected by HIV. As these populations are often marginalized within their communities, they are generally hard to reach and, therefore, hard to sample for representative biobehavioral surveys.

Enhancing surveillance within these severely affected groups helps improve and accelerate HIV prevention and treatment approaches for these populations and, therefore, is critical to helping the global community cross the finish line and achieve HIV epidemic control.

The Blue Book outlines innovative methods, including non-conventional complex sampling designs, required to provide population-level estimates such as the burden of HIV, progress toward the UNAIDS’ global hiv targets, incidence risk factors for HIV infection, as well as service coverage for these populations.

The past decade has seen many advances in HIV surveys and surveillance, particularly with regard to surveying key populations. These guidelines cover all aspects of surveying key populations, from conceptualization and implementation to report dissemination and data use.

The new guidelines:

• Describe sampling methods for hard to sample populations
• Detail how to integrate population size estimation methods into surveys
• Present comprehensive information on biomarker measurements in surveys
• Provide standardized questionnaires, indicators, tools, and templates to facilitate survey planning and implementation
• Will include ready-to-use electronic questionnaires specific for each key population (forthcoming)

Also forthcoming are later translations of the Blue Book into French, Spanish, and Russian.

CDC’s contribution to the development of these critical guidelines is just one example of the agency’s commitment to helping countries effectively lead sustained responses to their HIV epidemics and other global health threats, ultimately creating a safer America and a safer world.

Download the Blue Book here:

Guidelines:
http://www.who.int/hiv/pub/guidelines/biobehavioral-hiv-survey/en/