Support HIV/AIDS Prevention, Care, and Treatment Activities for Mothers, Children, and Families under the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) | CDC RFA GH20 2034

Opportunity Information: Apply for CDC RFA GH20 2034

This funding opportunity, titled "Support HIV/AIDS Prevention, Care, and Treatment Activities for Mothers, Children, and Families under the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR)" (CDC RFA GH20-2034), is a CDC-led cooperative agreement designed to strengthen global HIV programming for women, children, adolescents, and families in settings with a high HIV burden. It sits within the broader global push to end the AIDS epidemic as a public health threat by 2030, aligning with UNAIDS 95-95-95 targets: 95 percent of people living with HIV know their status, 95 percent of those diagnosed are on antiretroviral treatment, and 95 percent of those on treatment achieve viral suppression. The opportunity also supports the PEPFAR and UNICEF "Start Free, Stay Free, AIDS Free" commitment, which focuses on eliminating new HIV infections among children, keeping mothers alive and healthy, and addressing HIV risks and outcomes among adolescents and young women.

The award mechanism is a cooperative agreement, meaning CDC expects substantial involvement in how the work is carried out, including coordination, technical collaboration, and shared responsibility for achieving results. The opportunity anticipates a single award (Expected Awards: 1), which strongly suggests a centralized implementing partner model intended to coordinate activities at scale rather than spreading funding across multiple recipients. While the listed "Award Ceiling for Year 1" is shown as 0 (none), CDC indicates an anticipated total funding amount of approximately $5,000,000 for the first fiscal year, contingent on the availability of funds. In practice, this kind of language typically signals that CDC is not setting a fixed per-award cap in the notice, but does expect to obligate funds around the stated total amount.

A core feature of this opportunity is the emphasis on partnership as a strategy for getting more impact from limited PEPFAR resources. Beyond collaboration with national governments and in-country implementing partners, CDC highlights multilateral engagement, particularly with UNICEF, as essential to accelerating progress. UNICEF is positioned as a key partner because of its mandate and comparative advantage in advancing and protecting children's rights, and because it has deep reach into systems that matter for child and adolescent health, including maternal and child health services, community platforms, and social protection structures. The intent is to use this partnership to strengthen both implementation and evaluation, meaning not only delivering services but also improving measurement, learning, and evidence on what works in real-world settings.

Programmatically, the opportunity focuses on several linked HIV priorities. First, it aims to strengthen prevention of mother-to-child transmission (PMTCT), which includes identifying HIV in pregnant and breastfeeding women, rapidly starting and sustaining antiretroviral therapy, ensuring safe childbirth and breastfeeding guidance consistent with national and WHO recommendations, and ensuring HIV-exposed infants receive appropriate prophylaxis, early infant diagnosis, and follow-up. Second, it targets pediatric and adolescent HIV care and treatment, a historically challenging area due to missed diagnoses, delayed treatment initiation, adherence barriers, disclosure issues, and the need for age-appropriate service delivery models. Work in this area often involves improving case finding, linkage to care, retention strategies, viral load monitoring, regimen optimization, and differentiated service delivery approaches that fit children's and adolescents' needs.

In addition to clinical and program delivery improvements, the opportunity explicitly includes social protection and support for children affected by AIDS. This recognizes that HIV outcomes for children and adolescents are shaped by broader household and community factors such as poverty, food insecurity, caregiver illness, school disruption, stigma, and limited access to protective services. Social protection can include linkages to cash or in-kind support where available, education retention support, psychosocial services, caregiver support, and stronger referral networks between health services and community-based child protection systems. By strengthening these supports, programs can reduce vulnerability and improve retention in care, adherence, and overall wellbeing for affected children and families.

The opportunity also incorporates gender-based violence (GBV) and violence against children (VAC) prevention and response, as well as adolescent health services in high-burden HIV contexts. This reflects the reality that violence and HIV risk are tightly connected: violence can increase vulnerability to HIV infection, reduce access to prevention tools, and undermine consistent treatment and viral suppression. Integrating GBV and VAC programming commonly involves improving screening and first-line response within health settings, strengthening referral pathways to legal, psychosocial, and protection services, supporting community norms change efforts, and ensuring adolescent-friendly services that are confidential, accessible, and responsive to young people's needs. The inclusion of adolescent health services signals an intent to address HIV as part of a broader adolescent health package, which can improve uptake and reduce stigma by meeting multiple needs in one service environment.

Administratively, this is a discretionary funding opportunity under CFDA 93.067, managed by the Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Center for Global Health. The original posting date is December 22, 2019, with an original closing date of February 24, 2020, and electronic applications were due by 11:59 p.m. Eastern Time on the deadline. Eligibility is listed as "Others (see text field entitled Additional Information on Eligibility for clarification)," indicating that eligibility was likely constrained or defined in the full announcement text, potentially to specific organization types or partners suited to a single, large cooperative agreement.

Overall, the opportunity is best understood as a targeted CDC-PEPFAR investment meant to accelerate progress toward epidemic control by strengthening the continuum of HIV services for mothers, infants, children, and adolescents, while also addressing the social and structural factors that shape risk and treatment outcomes. The central strategy is to leverage UNICEF's strengths and reach to improve both implementation quality and the evidence base in high-burden settings, with an explicit focus on PMTCT, pediatric and adolescent treatment, social protection for children affected by AIDS, and integrated responses to GBV and VAC.

• The Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control - CGH in the health sector is offering a public funding opportunity titled "Support HIV/AIDS Prevention, Care, and Treatment Activities for Mothers, Children, and Families under the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR)" and is now available to receive applicants.
• Interested and eligible applicants and submit their applications by referencing the CFDA number(s): 93.067.
• This funding opportunity was created on Dec 22, 2019.
• Applicants must submit their applications by Feb 24, 2020 Electronically submitted applications must be submitted no later than 1159 p.m., ET, on the listed application due date.. (Agency may still review applications by suitable applicants for the remaining/unused allocated funding in 2026.)
• The number of recipients for this funding is limited to 1 candidate(s).
• Eligible applicants include: Others (see text field entitled Additional Information on Eligibility for clarification).

Apply for CDC RFA GH20 2034

[Watch] Creating a grant proposal using the step-by-step wizard inside the applicant portal: