HomeWomen and Girls ...DREAMS Partnership hide DREAMS Partnership Why DREAMS? Despite substantial declines in new HIV infections globally, the HIV/AIDS epidemic continues to disproportionately impact adolescent girls and young women (AGYW) in many countries. Globally, 4,000 young women and girls became infected with HIV every week in 2022. Data show that AGYW are up to 3 times more likely to become HIV-infected than their male counterparts. What is DREAMS? PEPFAR announced the flagship DREAMS [546 KB] [546 KB] (Determined, Resilient, Empowered, AIDS-free, Mentored, and Safe) public private partnership on World AIDS Day 2014 with private sector partners: the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Girl Effect, Gilead Sciences, Johnson & Johnson, and ViiV Healthcare. DREAMS is implemented across 15 countries and conducted in close collaboration with partners, experts, advocates, and adolescent girls and young women (AGYW). To date, PEPFAR has invested more than two billion dollars through DREAMS, reaching millions of girls and lifting up their families and communities. DREAMS Approach DREAMS provides a comprehensive, multi-sectoral package of core interventions to address key factors that make girls and young women particularly vulnerable to HIV. These include structural factors, such as gender-based violence, exclusion from economic opportunities, and a lack of access to secondary school. DREAMS layers multiple interventions at once so that AGYW are surrounded with critical support to keep them safe from HIV and other risks.. DREAMS Impact DREAMS was a catalyst for the roll-out of pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) in sub-Saharan Africa for AGYW. In DREAMS districts, DREAMS supported the scale up of PrEP initiations from 8,000 AGYW newly initiated on PrEP in 2017 to 340,765 AGYW newly initiated on PrEP in 2022. Furthermore, DREAMS districts saw a significantly greater decline in new HIV diagnosis among women in antenatal care (ANC) from 2015 to 2020 compared to districts without DREAMS programming, suggesting that DREAMS may have contributed to an acceleration in the declines. DREAMS has driven a greater global focus on the unique risks and opportunities experienced by AGYW. It has pushed partner governments to renew their commitments on gender equality and its impact on adolescent health and development. It has enabled multilateral organizations and non-governmental organizations to advocate more successfully for greater attention on and investment in AGYW. Critically, AGYW are meaningfully engaged at every step of DREAMS for their unique insights and leadership. Mirriam Mugala has been working with the Community HIV Prevention Project since 2016. Watch to see how she's made a difference in Zambia. More Videos DREAMS Country Fact Sheets External Media
