On 10 and 11 May 2017, the UNAIDS Inter-Agency Task Team (IATT) on Education and School Health, together with UNESCO as IATT secretariat, hosted a symposium entitled, Lessons from implementing HIV and school health initiatives: exploring gaps and opportunities for gender responsive programming in education’, in Lusaka, Zambia. Through a combination of presentations, field visits and participant interaction, the symposium provided opportunity for discourse on the evidence and lessons of: implementing HIV and health education programmes; strengthening interlinkages between education and health sector responses; and, enhancing gender responsive approaches within these programmatic efforts. Making the most of the meeting’s location, the programmes that were showcased had a particular focus on Africa.