Index testing and partner notification services (PNS) are systematic and voluntary approaches to notifying sexual and injecting partners and children of people diagnosed with HIV (index clients) about their increased risk of HIV infection; offering them HIV testing; and immediately linking them to HIV prevention or treatment services. With support from the US President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), PATH was an early adopter of index testing and PNS, first introducing our approach in Kenya and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) in 2015, and expanding this approach across other countries in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia.

This brief presents four vignettes showcasing how PATH has applied our differentiated approach to partner notification to customize index testing and PNS for a variety of contexts and population groups, from a generalized HIV epidemic in Kenya, with a particular focus on reaching men; to an epidemic concentrated among miners, fishing communities, and long-distance truck drivers in the DRC; to micro-epidemics among networks of key populations (KPs) in Vietnam; and finally, within both penal and community settings in Ukraine.