Shaping a new era of global health investment, policy, planning and prevention
AVAC Meeting in NYC
Advocacy and activism have been a linchpin in the history of HIV treatment and prevention. The visionary work of passionate advocates has resulted in hard-fought global gains against HIV.
AVAC is part of a robust civil society movement helping to shape a new era of global health spending and planning related to HIV prevention. We mobilize to ensure programs, products and policies are evidence-based, inclusive and effective. With our partner network, we identify critical needs and develop strategic campaigns to advance HIV prevention, with a focus on ensuring a rich pipeline of options move through research and development, and rollout effectively to reach the communities who need them most.
Our advocacy takes place:
Where funders, policies and programs come together.
At the point of service delivery, where options from the pipeline must become choices in people’s lives.
At Parliaments, State Houses, Ministries of Health, National legislatures, and international bodies,to press for global and country accountability.
In the hands of robust and sophisticated coalitions of African-led civil society organizations.
Impact of US Funding Cuts on Services for Key Populations
Percentage of key population-serving implementing partners that have reported full or partial termination of the provision of KP services due to US funding cuts (as of April 2025).
Late today in AVAC v Department of State and Global Health Council v Trump, the Supreme Court of the United States granted the US Presidential Administration’s request to stay an injunction that would require the Administration to obligate$4 billion of foreign assistance funds before they expire on September 30, as required by law. The Court’s ruling temporarily grants the Administration’srequest to pausea lower courtorder that the government spend the funds.With just four days until September 30,those funds, which otherwise would have saved lives and advanced global health and national security, will remain unspent.
Hard-won gains in access to essential medicines, vaccines, and diagnostics are under siege from political retreat, corporate profiteering, and deadly funding cuts. Yet governments building local production and increasing domestic health investment, multilateral initiatives expanding pooled procurement and financing, and civil society breaking drug monopolies prove that progress is possible when lives are valued over profits. This event will chart how the world can keep advancing access to medicines—because retreat is not an option.
The US presidential administration’s funding cuts and policy shifts are reshaping the public health landscape in profound ways. While many of these changes have drawn significant media attention, the impact on sexually transmitted infection research and prevention has remained largely overlooked, though the consequences are dire, writes AVAC’s Alison Footman writes in TheBodyPro.