An Adaptive Index Associated With Community Ownership and Preparedness for The HIV Prevention Program in India

Community-based groups (CBGs) are a frequent feature of community mobilization. In HIV/AIDS prevention programs in India, CBGs and networks are seen as a vehicle to strengthen demand for services and manage programmatic activities. Community mobilization is an important component of a participatory approach to health and development interventions.¹ and² have developed a methodology for measuring community mobilization score using community ownership preparedness index (COPI). These authors further use COPI to assess the effectiveness of the community mobilization in a 10-year, large-scale HIV Prevention intervention program, viz., “Avahan, the India AIDS Initiative”. The COPI was calculated as a weighted average of 22 sub index scores, where the weights are based on the domain knowledge (or perception). In this paper, we attempt to develop a new data-driven (adaptive) composite index to measure the community mobilization score of a CBG. The suggested data-driven composite score index has been calculated using multivariate statistical methods such as principal components and factor analysis. The nearness of the suggested index to COPI has been established, thus justifying the use of COPI as a community ownership and preparedness index. The effectiveness of the program over the period of evaluation can be clearly seen from the improvement in the adaptive scores during the period 2009 to 2012