RethinkHIV brings together the Blavatnik School of Government with a consortium of leading health, economics, and development experts to respond proactively to the challenge.

Contrary to media hype, the end of HIV/AIDS is not in sight. In sub-Saharan Africa, HIV treatment costs constitute an unacknowledged, unfunded liability for governments and donors alike. A rethink of the largest humanitarian aid flow in history is imperative to reconcile implicit long-term treatment commitments with explicit short-term funding pledges, and to align evolving international aid priorities with African domestic agendas.

The consortium will explore novel cross-sectoral approaches for addressing the structural determinants of HIV, examine the issue of co-morbidity and multi-morbidity in an ageing HIV population, as well as evaluate new evidence for the costs, effects, benefits, fiscal implications, and developmental impacts of interventions. The programme will develop country-specific models to estimate the size of the current and future fiscal burden. These will bring together macro-economic models, HIV transmission models and cost data in fiscal impact models.

RethinkHIV will produce publications in peer-reviewed journals, as well as policy briefs, blogs, interviews, op-eds and other outputs to generate both academic and policy dialogue. It will engage directly with ministries of finance and health, as well as key donors, in order to inform country-level planning and resource-allocation for the long-term management of HIV/AIDS.

Funded by:

• The Rush Foundation

Partners:

• Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford
• Centre for the Study of African Economies, University of Oxford
• Imperial College London
• London School for Hygiene and Tropical Medicine
• Harvard School for Public Health

The Rush Foundation funds disruptive thinking in HIV policy and on-the-ground interventions in sub-Saharan Africa.