This first appeared on Whitehouse.gov. Micheal Ighodaro is being honored as a White House Champion of Change for World Refugees.

I have been thinking about all the Champions out there—President Obama, David Kato, Nelson Mandela, many like myself. I am sorry for putting myself in line with all these great champions, but if there is anything I have learned about been a champion of change, it is that when you become a champion of a particular cause you live and dream that cause and it becomes the reason why you are alive. The great Muhammad Ali said, “Champions aren’t made in gyms. Champions are made from something they have deep inside them – a desire, a dream, a vision.”

Growing up in a country like mine with a parent who was really struggling with the idea of who I was or I wasn’t, I was forced to leave my parents’ house at the age of 17. I dropped out of school and ended up in the street like several others. I was living in a room with four other young gay men. The oldest was 18. We struggled to take care of ourselves, doing unspeakable things to survive. Activism isn’t just a title. These experiences defines why I call myself an activist because being an activist means more than fighting for Gay rights, it is about survival.

After I attended the International AIDS Conference in 2012, a media organization based in the US decided to amplify my story more than I would have liked or wanted. This made it too dangerous for me to live in Nigeria. I moved to New York not sure of where I was going to stay or how I would eat. I got to this city I now can proudly call home with just a single bag. I moved from couch to couch, staying with well-meaning friends who have now become family.

I moved to more permanent housing just after a month after I got to New York. But then this well-meaning person who offered me his home was shot and killed in the streets of Brooklyn. I was shocked beyond words. I was then introduced to Housing Works, which is a non-profit organization based in New York. Housing Works got me an emergency housing, linked me to some legal assistance so I could start my asylum application process, and got me temporary medical insurance. They did all this without pre-planning or having the funds for it.

The housing they got me soon became a room for two, because as the days went by the number of LGBT asylum seekers grew. As these new asylum seekers were introduced to the “rushed and unfunded asylum program’” at Housing Works. I starting talking to service providers in the city, filling out several forms to understand the process. Before I knew it, we had a program that was catering for 15 asylum seekers—mostly from Nigeria. I am proud to say that as of today the program has almost 40 asylum seekers who are being provided stable housing and other services. Access to health care including treatment for HIV is a key part of those services. I am proud to be working at an organization called AVAC to help end AIDS among LGBT Africans and all people.

My refugee application process took less than three months, but I have friends who have taken about two years just to get an interview with the immigration officer. Some are detained for months and sometimes years. These are part of issues we still need to address in our efforts to reform the immigration system. The efforts of Housing Works in New York and the great work that Immigration Equality continues to do needs to be supported and funded because they are on the frontline of saving our lives and providing us an opportunity for a new life in America.

Mitchell Warren is Executive Director of AVAC.

You all undoubtedly have seen — and celebrated — the US Supreme Court rulings on health care yesterday and marriage equality today! In the midst of many other global and domestic struggles, including recent tragedy in Charleston, SC, we need to draw energy from victories. You will also have seen many press releases on both rulings from many organizations; that is not our style, but know that we are celebrating and applauding.

Those of us in the office watched President Obama speak from the Rose Garden, and he quoted one of my favorite speeches of all time — Bobby Kennedy speaking at the University of Cape Town in June 1966:

“Each time a man [editorial note: today I am sure he would have said “person”] stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.”

I highly recommend viewing the full speech by RFK—check out this opening:

“I came here because of my deep interest and affection for a land settled by the Dutch in the mid-seventeenth century, then taken over by the British, and at last independent; a land in which the native inhabitants were at first subdued, but relations with whom remain a problem to this day; a land which defined itself on a hostile frontier; a land which has tamed rich natural resources through the energetic application of modern technology; a land which once imported slaves, and now must struggle to wipe out the last traces of that former bondage. I refer, of course, to the United States of America.”

Now more than ever: Much accomplished; much to do!

Mitchell Warren
Executive Director, AVAC

Next month the IAS Conference on HIV Pathogenesis, Treatment and Prevention will take place from July 19 – 22 in Vancouver, Canada.

Held every two years, this year’s conference will cover the results from several important studies, including a special symposium on the START trial; final results from HPTN 052; and important findings from several PrEP studies and projects. The full conference schedule is available on the IAS 2015 website and AVAC has pulled together a HIV prevention roadmap, sortable by timing, intervention and session type (also available as a PDF). IAS also has a one-pager on biomedical prevention activities at IAS.

In addition, we wanted to be sure to draw your attention to several satellite sessions that AVAC and partners are leading at IAS 2015 that are of particular interest to prevention advocates:

SUNDAY, JULY 19

• Creating Rectal Microbicides People Desire: How do we get there?, 12:30–14:30, Room 121-122
  With the recent completion of enrollment into the first-ever Phase II safety and acceptability study of a rectal microbicide (RM) for HIV prevention, many questions remain about future directions for the RM research agenda. Indeed, the opportunities and challenges posed by conducting a Phase 3 RM study are multifaceted. This session will include a panel of scientists, advocates and research participants who will share the latest information on RM science and discuss next steps in the development of RMs to prevent new HIV infections associated with anal sex.
• Injectable Options and Preventable Confusion: An updated and interactive discussion on the pipeline of antibodies, long-acting ARVs and vaccines, 14:45–16:45, Room 121-122
  As trials of varying “injectable prevention” options are moving ahead in similar populations, countries and trial sites, it is key for policy makers, researchers, regulators and advocates to understand the distinctions between the options. This interactive session will provide overview presentations on the major areas of work (preventive vaccines; long-acting injectable antiretrovirals; and passive immunization strategies with broadly neutralizing antibodies), followed by a panel discussion to explore issues related to trial design, community engagement and ethics. (Coffee and light snacks provided.)
• What's Next for HIV Vaccines: From design to efficacy testing, 17:00–19:00, Room 121-122
  The HIV research field is rapidly evolving and includes several vaccine strategies for prevention or therapy. This session will explore the latest in vaccine design, development and testing. The goal of this session is to examine the diverse, cross-platform approaches that are currently being vetted for vaccination and other approaches to help end the HIV epidemic.

MONDAY, JULY 20

• Minor Issues, Major Consequences: Ensuring Adolescents’ Access to Proven Prevention Methods, 18:30–20:30, Room 109
  If the dapivirine ring is found safe and effective in ASPIRE and The Ring Study and subsequently approved, it would be a triumph for women. Yet, women under 18, who are among those at highest risk, could be left out, absent safety data in adolescents. This session will review ethics, informed consent, law and regulations around adolescents in clinical research, and the urgent need for new HIV prevention options for adolescents.

For those not attending the conference in person, there are a number of ways to follow along at a distance. In addition to AVAC’s online commentary on Twitter and Facebook to can follow the official conference hashtag – #IAS2015.

Official online scientific coverage will be provided by Clinical Care Options and NAM. Sign up to receive email bulletins from NAM.

Stay tuned for additional updates as the conference draws nearer, and we welcome questions and comments at avac@avac.org.

Heeyoung Sohn is an AVAC staff member.

Last week, the New York Academy of Sciences brought together researchers and public policy makers for a conference on phylogenetics. As someone who is not a biologist or researcher, I quickly learned that phylogenetics is using genetic sequences to tell a story about how groups or organisms evolved from a common ancestor and/or how they are related to one another. In fact, we hear about phylogenetics all the time when scientists talk about the evolution of humans or even when we draw a family tree. But it isn’t just human genetic material that gets run through phylogenetic analyses. Viruses have genomes, too. The purpose of this conference was to discuss the state of the art in the ongoing investigation of how phylogenetic analyses are being used in the context of HIV.

Phylogenetic analyses of HIV use sequenced viral genomes, along with a complex set of assumptions and statistics to develop “family trees” for groups of viruses. This approach has been used to pinpoint the strains of SIV—the simian form of HIV—that likely made the leap from non-human primates to humans, to begin the epidemic many decades ago. And it is being used now to understand the origins and geography of particular strains, study drug resistance and so much more.

HIV is highly genetically variable. It copies itself over and over again and makes countless small errors. This means that evolutionary trees don’t stretch over decades, but over weeks or months. Scientists can use phylogenetics to track clusters of new cases of HIV, even potentially identifying the individual who is the source of the virus that was then passed on to others in the community. It’s important to remember, though, that phylogenetic analysis isn’t fool proof. It generates viral “family trees” based on a set of assumptions and statistical analyses, and these can be wrong.

On one level, phylogenetics sounds like a powerful tool for fighting the virus. In geographic areas where HIV testing has identified high rates of new cases, researchers can pinpoint the specific locales and even individuals associated with these “hot spots.” (HIV testing gives you an idea of where a hot spot is, but because people can travel to testing centers and may even intentionally choose to go somewhere other than where they live, the sites that find many new cases may not always reveal where the new transmissions are happening.) Researchers propose that phylogenetics could be used to project incidence rates in a given area and even calculate the likelihood of an individual from that area acquiring HIV.

So far, most phylogenetic analyses are focused on understanding what has happened in a community—not predicting the future. For instance, one phylogenetic study presented at the conference focused on HIV transmission in the Netherlands, which has seen a resurgence in HIV despite the widespread use of antiretroviral therapy. The study mapped and tracked HIV transmission in gay men and men who have sex with men, and found that both well-established networks and the continual addition of new networks drive the HIV epidemic.

However, phylogenetics is a double-edged sword and advocates at the meeting pointed out that there are issues to track closely as the field develops. Joanne Csete of Columbia University highlighted the potential risks to and violations of human rights that could happen if phylogenetics was used to pinpoint specific areas and/or at-risk populations. Mark Harrington, from the Treatment Action Group, discussed the importance of language and how dangerous the phrase “who infected who” can be when talking about phylogenetics, as people or groups can become targets for abuse.

This erroneous linking of people is a real threat as the world recently saw Michael Johnson, a university student, accused of infecting others with HIV, without any evidence. Although phylogenetics was not used, Johnson’s case shows how quick people are to link HIV infections to specific individuals despite the lack of evidence. As the UNAIDS guidance on HIV criminalization writes, “HIV phylogenetic evidence alone is not sufficient to establish, to the required criminal law standard, that one person did infect another person with HIV.”

Phylogenetics also has the potential to drive funding to only certain areas or groups and cause others to fall through the cracks that also are in need of prevention, treatment and testing. The science behind phylogenetics is complex, leaving room for potential misinterpretation of results.

It is no doubt that phylogenetics will play an important role in the future of HIV/AIDS. Advocates and their allies need to track this evolving field to ensure that efforts to pinpoint genetically linked cases don’t end up putting targets on specific communities or even individuals. It’s essential, as always, to ensure that research and methods which can be used for improving the fight against HIV/AIDS do not violate human rights and are clearly explained, so that the overall response stays on track. To read a phylogenetic case study, click here.