Unique identifier codes to track AGYW across service providers for DREAMS programming in Malawi and Zimbabwe

BACKGROUND: AGYW suffer disproportionate burden from HIV. PEPFAR's DREAMS program aims to empower and equip adolescents to remain HIV-free. Each partner has independent funding agreements, M&E systems, and reporting structures. This makes analyzing which services an individual girl has received difficult. While digital systems can automate unique identifier codes (UIC), DREAMS is often paper-based and paper-first making automated UICs not possible.
DESCRIPTION: UICs are challenging: Need to avoid duplicate entries; avoid data entry issues (misspellings or duplicates); readily available ID numbers e.g. national ID compromise privacy; need to limit the use of personally identifiable information. PSI was tasked in Zimbabwe and Malawi to track AGYW nationally across implementing partners (IPs) and agencies to ensure that those enrolled are receiving the core primary package of services as well as additional services that they should receive.
LESSONS LEARNED: Due to IPs being paper-first, PSI adopted a written UIC algorithm that had been demonstrated effective in other countries for KP programs. This is valuable in situations where national ID is avoided to protect anonymity and safety such as KP and AGYW programming. The UIC is completed by asking the AGYW details that are then concatenated.
The UIC was tested with client data and was found to have <2% collisions. In order to further ease the UIC, an app was created to help those with phones to compose the UIC correctly and consistently. The algorithm was revised and adopted when implementation began in order to create a consistent length to support data quality and cleaning. This put in place a UIC for the first time across all IPs and required collective approval and uptake among partners.
CONCLUSIONS: Through the implementation of this UIC algorithm PSI has been able to track 1,455,797 unique profiles since FY16 in Zimbabwe across 5,382,319 service events and 307,872 unique profiles since FY18 in Malawi across 2,369,405 service events. The unified approach to UIC development and a support tool to generate UICs which reduces errors allows accurate tracking of service uptake across multiple independent partners and should be scaled up nationally.

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