Project A-STHreet: a validation tool to prepare the release of results

Adolescents living on the streets are a particularly vulnerable population to violence, HIV, and other sexually transmitted infections (STIs), while facing numerous barriers that limit their access to healthcare services. It is in this context that the A-STHreet – CIPHER 039 project was implemented, aiming to better understand the accessibility and use of HIV and other STI testing services by adolescents aged 10 to 19 living on the streets in Côte d'Ivoire.

After several months of work carried out in three health districts of Abidjan, the PAC-CI Program organized, on April 20, 2026, a workshop to validate the results. This activity, coordinated by Dr. Touré Frank, a researcher at the PAC-CI Program, is a major step before the official ceremony to present the results, scheduled in the coming weeks.

The workshop brought together representatives from national programs, technical partners, non-governmental organizations, community actors, as well as representatives of adolescents living on the streets and young people living with HIV.

The goal was to share the main results of the project, discuss their implications, and gather recommendations to strengthen existing policies and interventions.

To foster participatory reflection, the participants were divided into working groups around several themes: accessibility to HIV and other STI testing services, the use of these services by adolescents living on the streets, risk behaviors and prevention, as well as the integration of these adolescents into public health policies.

Through this approach, the A-STHreet project reaffirms its ambition: to produce useful scientific data, contribute to strengthening HIV and other STI prevention strategies, and improve access to healthcare services for the most vulnerable adolescent populations.