There has never been an AIDS conference like the one currently underway this week—AIDS 2020 Virtual. As a global collective of people concerned with HIV, we also check the daily updates on COVID-19. Both demand real, urgent solutions. Here is AVAC’s take from the early sessions of AIDS 2020 Virtual and the actions that can make a difference right now, and in the future.

As the world works to make sense of the news from AIDS 2020 news, advocates, activists, scientists and global leaders must ensure that COVID-19 doesn’t further exacerbate or distract from the primary prevention crisis in HIV.

UNAIDS’ annual update, released yesterday, shows no change in the global total of new HIV infections. There were roughly 1.7 million infections last year. Five years ago, UNAIDS’ Fast-Track campaign set global sights on slashing rates of infections to 500,000 per year worldwide. At that time, there were roughly 2 million infections per year. Instead of meeting the goal, the world has made marginal progress—a reality that’s been clear for some time. While there are pockets of progress, the picture—even before COVID-19—is one of crisis and unfinished business.

To effect immediate change, AVAC calls for the following five actions:

1. UNAIDS and WHO must lead the call for a “Pandemic Policy-Change Agenda” in which law- and policy makers remove policies that criminalize sex work, drug use, same-sex behavior and HIV status. These policies are barriers to HIV prevention and to accessing prevention and treatment for other pathogens, including COVID-19.

2. National AIDS programs—working with WHO, PEPFAR, GFATM and civil society—must develop and implement differentiated service delivery of oral PrEP, including multi-month scripting with provision of self-test kits at each refill, using the same supply points to offer male and female condoms and contraceptive refills. As just announced new data from the SEARCH study show, access to PrEP is a powerful tool to bring down incidence at the population level. For more on differentiated service delivery (DSD) and the advocacy to go with it, see the satellite session convened by AVAC, IAS and PATH: Bringing PrEP closer to home: Why is now the time for differentiated PrEP?, available on-demand at aids2020.org. And read our recent blog entry on the topic.

3. UNAIDS must coordinate the funding and implementation of a rapid assessment of best practices to expand local community health cadres. Among these cadres, peer networks of people living with HIV are especially important to provide safe and local capacity to offer adherence support and to help connect people to food and income assistance and other social support in the context of concurrent pandemics. This rapid assessment should be used to drive funding to civil society and activist groups to implement strategies adapted for local contexts. At AIDS 2020, AVAC is proud to be presenting work from the COMPASS coalition, a vibrant locally grounded, transnational activist effort that provides a model for tying this type of data-driven work to action. (See a related poster to this work, Translational Activism for an Effective, Comprehensive HIV Response, at the On-Demand Poster Channel Track F.)

4. WHO, ViiV and other product developers, must work with regulatory agencies to advance a comprehensive, clearly articulated plan for acting on promising research findings. AIDS 2020 brought news that injectable cabotegravir is highly-effective in reducing HIV risk in men who have sex with men and transgender women. In the HPTN 083 study, participants who received the injection had significantly fewer infections compared to those who received daily oral PrEP—even though early analysis suggests relatively high rates of oral PrEP adherence. This is exciting and challenging news given that current data have yet to show efficacy in cisgender women, and rates of new HIV infections in adolescent girls and young women are persistently high. (A study in that population, HPTN 084, is underway.) Recently, the US FDA licensed F/TAF for people excluding those who have vaginal sex, prompting confusion and concern. It also spurred mobilization, led by cisgender women seeking clarity and equity in HIV prevention. At the same time, the EMA’s regulatory review of the dapivirine vaginal ring for HIV prevention is ongoing for this important prevention tool. For products that work in all bodies and all genders to reach the people who want and need them, the following must happen:

• Product developers must work with communities to ensure that introduction plans developed for CAB-LA and the dapivirine ring are clear, comprehensive and contextualized—so that the knowns, unknowns and timelines are explicit for the growing array of PrEP options available for different groups.
• ViiV, the manufacturer of CAB-LA, must move quickly to work with regulatory agencies. This work should be shared with community and reflect that input on plans for seeking review and developing a timeline for incorporating data from the ongoing HPTN 084 study of CAB-LA in cisgender women.
• WHO must simultaneously launch a parallel consultative process to support guidance for CAB-LA and the dapivirine ring, so there will be no delay in rolling them out once regulatory review is completed.

5. Civil society engagement must be regarded with the same urgency as the research itself for COVID-19, HIV and more. Clinical trial results don’t translate into action without meaningful stakeholder engagement at every stage of a trial, including design, implementation, data analysis, and eventual access to new interventions. AVAC is working with numerous partners on the leading edge of engagement for COVID-19 research to apply the Good Participatory Practice Guidelines and establish a COVID Advocates Advisory Board for these critical times. It is essential for civil society and national governments to have the funding and the space—virtual or otherwise— to make this vital work a success.

In the coming days, AVAC will be bringing more updates on AIDS 2020 news and its relationship to these core recommendations. In the coming months and years, we will be working with advocates worldwide to ensure that the critical issues raised in this moment of “virtual” convening and “paused” activities translate into real and dynamic change.

AVAC, Health GAP and the Treatment Action Group (TAG) strongly condemn the Trump Administration’s withdrawal from the World Health Organization (WHO). Today’s announcement formalizing the President’s threats from earlier this year is short-sighted and dangerous, and will cost more lives and deepen economic devastation in the United States and around the world, which are already reeling from the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

“This virus respects no borders; COVID-19 anywhere can quickly become COVID-19 everywhere. Global health emergencies require global leadership, and that requires a strong and supported World Health Organization,” said Mitchell Warren, AVAC’s Executive Director. “The Administration is playing politics with people’s lives here in the US and around the world. We will be left behind as the world comes together to collaborate and coordinate science as the best strategy to counter the pandemic, and we will lose ground in our historical investments to end HIV, TB, hepatitis C and other health issues.”

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought unprecedented global cooperation among researchers and funders, with WHO playing a critical role in coordinating both the overall global response and many of the global research initiatives. Global cooperation on public health policy, science, data and information sharing is needed more urgently than ever before. The Trump administration makes a dangerous gamble in thinking that the US can act alone in the response to COVID-19.

“We are seeing the disastrous effects of the US federal government’s lack of strategy playing out every day in increased COVID cases and deaths of Americans, particularly in the Black community,” says Suraj Madoori, TAG’s US and Global Health Policy Director. “Withdrawal from WHO will only compound the issues for our nation and for the world by further retreating on shared responsibilities in public health governance.”

The COVID-19 epidemic is devastating already constrained health systems in low- and middle-income countries where COVID-19 is surging, and has further weakened the US healthcare system as well. At the same time, this new pandemic is already having profound implications on responses to HIV/AIDS, TB, viral hepatitis, malaria, vaccination and contraceptive programs and all other public health responses.

WHO plays a key role in coordination, guidance development and mobilization of these public health responses in countries struggling with COVID-19 in addition to limited resources, conflict and other humanitarian and ecological disaster-related crises. As governments and stakeholders position resources against COVID-19, the WHO has taken the lead in forming the Access to COVID-19 Tools (ACT) Accelerator, a new and needed global collaboration to accelerate development, production and equitable access to COVID-19 tests, treatments and vaccines.

The US, as a historic leader and funder of global public health initiatives, and the largest funder of WHO, has a moral responsibility to help ensure an equitable global response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Terminating the US relationship with WHO starves the organization of funding, US staff and US expertise. It likely prolongs the pandemic and will force WHO to cut critical funding and support for other health programs, including those responding to HIV/AIDS, TB, viral hepatitis, and sexual and reproductive health.

“The Trump administration is shameless in its extreme nationalism at the expense of people’s lives. The WHO performs a vital role in getting new HIV treatments to people around the world safely and quickly and providing key technical assistance to strengthen health systems in vulnerable countries. Trump pulling the US out of the WHO is yet another demonstration of his disregard for people living with HIV around the world,” said Matthew Rose, Director of US Policy and Advocacy for Health GAP.

AVAC, Health GAP and TAG call for the Trump Administration to immediately reverse this disastrous decision, restore and protect funding to WHO and work to ensure global cooperation in the pandemic response.

In the time before COVID-19, many people would have been heading to the Bay Area in the US for AIDS2020 and to Mexico City for HIV2020. Now, both conferences are virtual. Read on for highlights and ways to navigate AIDS2020 Virtual, and stay tuned for other updates on HIV2020.

As in years past, AIDS2020 is offering the latest scientific breakthroughs on HIV, opportunities for advocates to come together to sharpen their agenda and new this year, a special day-long meeting devoted to COVID-19. The pre-conferences began today and there is a full agenda through July 10. Highlights Include:

• The latest global HIV estimates from UNAIDS.
• A survey of LGBTI+ people in 138 countries assessing the socioeconomic impact of COVID-19.
• New evidence on what may be the first adult with HIV achieving long-term HIV remission without a bone marrow transplant.
• Analysis of the safety and efficacy of the first long-acting injectable PrEP.

The satellites and regular conference sessions are only available to those who register for the conference. But, as in previous years, there will be a Global Village that’s free and open to the public, featuring networking zones, workshops and more.

Another complimentary offering is the final day of the conference—the July 10 special meeting on COVID-19, which will focus on developments in the research pipeline for SARS-CoV-2, policy analysis and lessons from the field. Click here for a free registration. And for more on the COVID-19 and intersections with HIV check out AVAC’s dedicated resources at www.avac.org/covid.

Navigating the Conference

• Check out the full program at the AIDS2020 website.
• HIV Prevention Roadmap – Click to download the roadmap, which can be sorted by timing, intervention or session type (poster, workshop, plenary or satellite).
• AVAC@AIDS 2020 – Click to download a summary of sessions, satellites and poster presentations from the AVAC team.
• Research Literacy Networking Zone Pop-Up Chats – Click to download the schedule of pop-up chats with researchers and advocates.

Tracking the News

• For highlights from the conference follow AVAC on Twitter and the conference hashtag, #AIDS2020.
• Go to aidsmap for their daily coverage of AIDS 2020.

Program Highlights

Note: sessions may be streamed at multiple times, some are also streamed live, and many sessions are available to download on demand. Times reflect Pacific Daylight Time (PDT).

• The Research Literacy Networking Zone (RLNZ) in the Global Village
• Towards an HIV Cure: Opening session & Advancing the HIV cure field and debunking myths and misconceptions
• Bringing PrEP Closer to Home: Why is now the time for differentiated PrEP?
• The Power of Peers: Training HIV prevention ambassadors to support PrEP use in their communities
• HIV Vaccine: The search goes on!
• One Year After ECHO: Integration in the Time of COVID
• Data-Driven Advocacy in 2020 and Beyond: Tools and tactics for civil society to define and win high-impact change in the HIV response
• Ending the HIV Epidemic: Optimism, realism and disparities
• How did they do it? What successful communities can teach all of us about making dramatic progress against HIV epidemics and what this means in the age of COVID
• Bound But Not Gagged: Resilience in the era of the global gag rule

Every Day During AIDS 2020 Virtual

Networking Zones Channel
AVAC’s Research Literacy Zone (RLZN) will connect you to resources offering a foundation in biomedical interventions, the clinical trial process, advocacy for the integration of sexual reproductive health with HIV prevention and treatment, and the impact of HIV and COVID-19 on each other. The RLZN will also feature a series of virtual conversation and Q&As with leading researchers and advocates on topics such as: the status and implications of HVTN 083 & 084— two trials looking at the antiretroviral cabotegravir as a long-acting injectable PrEP; the AMP trial testing a broadly neutralizing antibody (bNAb) expected to announce results later this year; the larger bNAb research agenda; the basics of stakeholder engagement in research; an introduction to HIV cure research and more. Download the schedule here.

Wednesday, July 1

07:00–08:30, Pre-Conference Channel 4
Towards an HIV Cure: Opening session & Advancing the HIV cure field and debunking myths and misconceptions. At this pre-conference session, join a moderated discussion on cure strategies in resource-limited settings, myths and misconceptions, changing attitudes and advances in research.

Monday, July 6

06:00–07:00, Satellite Channel 3; 23:00–24:00, Satellite Channel 4
Bringing PrEP Closer to Home: Why is now the time for differentiated PrEP? A move toward more community-based and telehealth models have accelerated during COVID-19. Join this session Hear perspectives from providers, PrEP users, ministry of health, and global normative agencies and to discuss why differentiated service delivery DSD will be essential to significantly increase PrEPuptake by the end of 2020 and beyond!

05:00-06:00, Workshop Channel 2
The Power of Peers: Training HIV prevention ambassadors to support PrEP use in their communities. Priority populations such as adolescent girls and young women, men who have sex with men and other, must be offered meaningful ways to engage with peer support and effective advocacy in the context of rising community awareness to take PrEP and use it for as long as they need it. This workshop takes participants through the HIV Prevention Ambassador Training and learn how it boosts the impact of existing PrEP programs.

Tuesday, July 7

09:00-10:00, Satellite Channel 2; 12:00-13:00, Satellite Channel 3
HIV Vaccine: The search goes on! Despite life-saving advances in biomedical an HIV vaccine remains a necessity to finally end the epidemic. In this satellite, The Global HIV Vaccine Enterprise, NIH/HVTN/HPTN, with the participation of the South African Medical Research Council, IAVI, EU consortiums and AVAC are putting a spotlight on the breadth of ongoing research, and the role of funders, product developers, researchers and communities in sustaining HIV vaccine development.

Wednesday, July 8

06:00-07:00, Satellite Channel 2

One Year After ECHO: Integration in the Time of COVID. Results from the Evidence for Contraceptive Options and HIV Outcomes trial reflected the impact siloed services for family planning (FP), sexual and reproductive health, and HIV have on women’s health. The COVID-19 pandemic has only raised the urgency. This session looks at gains made in FP/HIV integration since the ECHO trial results; how COVID-19 is impacting the effort; and implications for the future. And check out our video series, One Expert, One Question, One Minute! Produced by AVAC and FP2020. Experts from all around the world share what we need to do for successful HIV/FP integration.

05:00–06:00, Workshop Channel 1
Data-Driven Advocacy in 2020 and Beyond: Tools and tactics for civil society to define and win high-impact change in the HIV response. Activists have marked recent wins using data strategically in campaigns. This session will explore case studies in East and Southern Africa and address the common barriers for civil society to deploy data effectively, such as missing or poor-quality data and lack of access.

Thursday July 9

08:00, IAS Networking Booth
Join a conversation with cure advocates on “what do you want to know about cure?” IAS/AVAC Advocacy-for-Cure Fellows Philister Adhiambo from Kenya Medical Research Institute (KMRI) , Owen Mulenga from (MUHJU), Josephine Nabukenya from the Treatment Advocacy and Literacy Campaign will answer your questions.

On Demand-Only Sessions

Symposia and Bridging Session, On-Demand Channel
Ending the HIV Epidemic: Optimism, realism and disparities. Join to hear four perspectives on where we are and where we should go as we aim to end the HIV epidemic around the world. Speakers will take four distinct perspectives, each speaking across geographies and populations.

Symposia and Bridging Session, On-Demand Channel
How did they do it? What successful communities can teach all of us about making dramatic progress against HIV epidemics and what this means in the age of COVID. Cities, regions and countries around the world have brought down HIV incidence and mortality. How did they do it? Last year, amfAR, AVAC and Friends of the Global Fight, in partnership with Kaiser Family Foundation, released a report, Translating Progress Into Success to End the AIDS Epidemic, looking at success stories. In this session, advocates and researchers from these case studies discuss how to apply the lessons they learned to advocacy and policy.

Symposia and Bridging Session, On-Demand Channel
Bound But Not Gagged: Resilience in the era of the global gag rule. Join top learn about the impact of the global gag rule and the domestic (US) gag rule on women and girls around the world, including key populations and how they have responded.

It’s an exciting and important time in HIV prevention research and advocacy. At AIDS 2020 Virtual, we can come together—COVID-19 be damned. As intrepid, committed advocates, we can push an HIV agenda forward to a future we clearly see—with many options for evidence-based prevention, well-funded research, and an integrated and equitable global response to the public health threats of today and tomorrow.

The stories are coming from Malawi, South Africa, Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe and elsewhere—people struggling to get treatment for chronic illness, failed attempts to refill ARVs and key prevention commodities, high numbers reporting they can’t get to the clinic, informal groups coming together to find and deliver medication. These are pictures of communities in lockdown from COVID-19, facing the consequences to public health.

This troubling news from advocates in sub-Saharan Africa has grave implications. According to a May 2020 analysis of multiple mathematic models by the HIV Modelling Consortium, COVID-related barriers to HIV treatment, care and prevention could result in 500,000 additional deaths from AIDS-related illnesses. The world has made tremendous progress against HIV. If we allow COVID-19 to set us back, we could lose more than a decade of these gains. As AVAC’s Mitchell Warren said, “We cannot play global health whack-a-mole and ignore other devastating diseases while we turn attention to COVID-19. HIV treatment and prevention interruption cannot be an acceptable result of COVID-19: in that model, even if we succeed against COVID-19, we fail against everything else.”

The good news is we know how to preserve the progress made: we have to urgently expand models for differentiated service delivery (DSD), and we have to do it right now. DSD puts clients at the center and adapts—tailoring HIV programs and services to reflect the preferences and expectations of various groups who need HIV prevention or treatment.

In Zimbabwe, a DSD program of the Batanai HIV & AIDS Service Organisation (BHASO) has succeeded with allowing health care workers to bring needed care and medicine to clients, instead of requiring clinic visits. The program is expanding and is exactly the kind of initiative that others should model.

DSD can mean people get their medications, learn about prevention options, find the counseling they need, and stay connected to care. DSD can mean individuals at risk of diseases such HIV or TB are engaging with healthcare that works for them.

AVAC has been expanding its advocacy for DSD, even before COVID-19 gripped the world. Why? Because tenaciously high incidence rates, a heartbreaking number of people lost to follow-up, and the millions of people who don’t know their status or are not virally suppressed can all be addressed with DSD. This means developing programs and services that clients and communities have helped to design, programs that offer a range of approaches, programs that support diverse needs.

Now we need DSD more than ever, so people can access the care, treatment and prevention they need in the midst of COVID-19 lockdowns and disruptions to the healthcare systems in their communities. The results of this new modeling escalate the urgency for widespread adoption of DSD approaches.

The modeling is detailed and the findings are drastic: five teams contributed to models looking at disruptions of three and six months and their impact on AIDS mortality and incidence. According to the findings, if services are disrupted for six months then additional deaths will range from 471,000-673,000 in the following year, which could bring the death toll from AIDS in 2021 to more than 900,000. Those figures “set back the clock” on the HIV epidemic to 2008, a year when the WHO reports 950,000 people died from AIDS in the region. And the heightened rates of loss of life are expected to last for years. Other predictions include reversed gains in mother-to-child transmission with a “drastic” rise of infections among children, up by 37 percent in Mozambique, 78 percent in Zimbabwe and 104 percent in Uganda, and adverse impacts on prevention efforts as well.

As advocates, we cannot allow these scenarios to come true. As UNAIDS executive director Winnie Byanyima says, “The COVID-19 pandemic must not be an excuse to divert investment from HIV. There is a risk that the hard-earned gains of the AIDS response will be sacrificed to the fight against COVID-19, but the right to health means that no one disease should be fought at the expense of the other.”

WHO leader, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, is also raising the alarm, “We must read this as a wake-up call to countries to identify ways to sustain all vital health services.”

Watch-dogging country governments to adapt HIV service delivery is vital to sustain and advance three decades of progress in HIV prevention and treatment. Countries must develop the capacity to deliver DSD rapidly and safely, while also pursuing the strongest and wisest course of action against COVID-19.

To get the job done:

• Give people options to choose where and when to access their ART and prevention, and make it easy for them to do so. No one size fits all.
• Governments and donors must establish models that revolve around the clients, not the health system.
• Governments, donors and implementers must anticipate factors such as geography, HIV prevalence or individual barriers to care and address those factors in programs that are codesigned with clients and community. This creates models for service delivery that serve diverse populations. All this necessarily involves investment in both lay and professional health workers for quality clinical care that includes psychosocial support.
• Governments and donors should expand and invest in DSD models for treatment, which include: six monthly refills, community ART groups, nurse-led community ART distribution points, door-to-door ART delivery and there are many more!
• The field must also use these models to guide efforts to develop DSD for PrEP and HIV prevention. These include conducting online risk assessments and follow-up consultations, providing multi-month refills for continuing clients, peer drop-offs and courier delivery of PrEP refills, to name a few.
• It’s time to seize opportunities for integration with other essential services such as: sexual reproductive health and rights (as recently highlighted in a new report from UNAIDS and WHO), interventions for gender-based violence (GBV), and the response to COVID-19. This requires an enabling policy environment and robust program monitoring and evaluation.
• Human rights should never be compromised during the COVID-19 pandemic. Governments must find ways to deliver both COVID-19 and HIV programs within a human rights framework.

AVAC and our partners are leading the charge on DSD advocacy and on identifying where COVID-19 is impacting HIV service delivery. Along with other HIV advocates, we have recommended people living with HIV (PLHIV) receive three to six month refills of ARVs during lockdown. Georgetown University’s HIV Policy Lab has been writing about the need for these multi-month dispensing strategies and policies that support them. COMPASS advocacy partners in Malawi, Tanzania and Zimbabwe have engaged with their respective ministries of health and identified that staffing and supply shortages in ministries and among implementers are making it difficult or impossible to meet the recommendation. Advocates are continuing to follow up with ministries, implementers and funders to find ways to make DSD work during this time.

We are urgently working with TB, SRHR and other health advocates locally and globally to ensure that people receive the care, treatment and prevention they need for all aspects of their health. It isn’t an easy task. The effort requires collaborations and investment at a scale never before seen in global health. But there is no other choice. This is the only way.

This 10-week interactive and online course will help researchers and clinical trial stakeholder to apply the Good Participatory Practice (GPP) Guidelines in their unique settings. In this unprecedented time, sustaining effective partnerships is more crucial than ever before. This course provides a personalized learning experience, global knowledge, tools to advance GPP implementation in diverse contexts and access to GPP experts and professional networks. For more information, send an email to [email protected].

The course starts runs from June 22 to August 28, 2020. Enroll now at engage.avac.org.

Black Lives Matter.

The Black lives of AVAC’s staff, partners and friends matter. The Black lives of those who live near our office in Harlem matter. The Black lives of those on the streets across the United States and around the world calling for justice and equity matter. It’s more important than ever to say these fundamental truths.

Since AVAC’s founding 25 years ago, our focus has been advocating for solutions to HIV, a virus that disproportionately affects Black and Brown people around the world. In 2020, we have widened our focus to advocate for an equitable response to COVID-19, another virus that is disproportionately devastating Black and Brown communities in the US and – increasingly – around the world.

We are HIV and global health advocates and activists, and our work is fundamentally about social justice and human rights. In the United States, police brutality is a moral, ethical and public health crisis that must be addressed by every one of us.

We can’t be silent. We won’t be silent. We join the call for true leadership from our government, for an end to police brutality and for justice and equity that addresses the systemic racism in the United States. We know we can’t address HIV or COVID-19 without addressing this insidious epidemic that also attacks communities of color, and we are committed to working with partners and allies to address it.

The AVAC team stands in solidarity with the families of Ahmaud Arbery, George Floyd, Tony McDade, Breonna Taylor, and the thousands of others whose names we know and those whose names we don’t know, who have lost their lives and opportunities to the epidemic of racism. We stand in solidarity with those on the streets every day calling for justice.

As an organization, AVAC is committed to coming together to interrogate our own privilege and power and ensure we do better as allies and partners. We know it won’t be easy and we know we won’t always get it right, but we are committed to listening, responding and learning. And we commit to redoubling our work of advocating for equity, diversity and social justice as we continue to seek solutions to HIV and other public health crises.

The AVAC team is united in sorrow and anger at the inequities that are being laid bare in America today. We advocate every day for an equitable HIV response, but we know that we can’t stop there. We stand with those who are calling for a more just and equitable world.

In case you missed it, AVAC has a number of new resources to support our collective advocacy for HIV prevention research and an equitable, evidence-based response to COVID-19.

HIV Advocates Demand an Ethical Response to COVID-19

• To accelerate search for COVID-19 vaccine, look to HIV and act globally, this commentary in Devex by AVAC’s Mitchell Warren calls for vaccine development and a response to COVID-19 driven by public health, engaged communities and global collaboration, not nationalism.
• In a live chat with aidsmap, AVAC Fellow Winifred Ikilai makes the case for Good Participatory Practice in COVID-19 vaccine development and delivery.
• HIV Advocates Respond to the COVID-19 Crisis – On USAID’s blog, the CASPR Coalition writes about the role HIV advocates must play so that resources and networks empower communities responding to COVID-19.
• COVID-19, Yes but HIV Needs Attention Too – In this article in Malawi’s Times newspaper, 2019 AVAC Fellow Josephine Chinele, from the Pakachere Institute for Health and Development Communication, exhorts leaders to safeguard gains in HIV while tackling COVID-19.
• Ethical Conduct of SARS-CoV-2 Vaccine Challenge Studies – AVAC and TAG respond to the call for human challenge studies in vaccine research–The WHO Working Group has articulated important criteria for assessing a challenge study, but we believe that they left out the most important one: Until there is an approved treatment, a challenge trial with a potentially fatal and as-yet untreatable pathogen is unacceptable.
• How COVID-19 Must Transform US Global Health Strategy – Writing in The Hill, AVAC Executive Director Mitchell Warren and President of Friends of the Global Fight Against AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria Chris Collins challenge us not just to survive this crisis but to seize this moment and begin work on a more sustainable future–one in which the next global pandemics land in a more prepared, more secure and healthier world.
• A look at the pipeline: COVID-19 diagnostics, therapeutics and a potential vaccine. This document also links to a number of additional resources tracking these developments.

Unprecedented focus on vaccine development for COVID-19 put a new perspective on HIV Vaccine Awareness Day (HVAD) on May 18.

There’s never been more at stake or more opportunity to build global capacity to ethically develop and deliver vaccines, which are essential to eventually end HIV and face future epidemics.

• HIV Vaccines: Are You Aware? – This op-ed placed in Zambia’s Daily Mail Limited 2020 AVAC Fellow Esnart Sikazindu spells out why continued investment in HIV vaccine research is essential.
• AVAC’s new report, Five “P”s to Watch: Platforms, process, partnerships, payers and participatory practices that drive vaccine development, connects key issues and lays out how HIV vaccine research is making the search for a COVID-19 vaccine faster, smarter and more inclusive.
• AVAC’s latest podcast episode of Px Pulse features leading voices from HIV vaccine and prevention research talking about the intersection of HIV and COVID-19.
• Check out key messages on priorities and unique opportunities for vaccine advocacy for HIV, COVID-19 and future epidemics.

This post first appeared on USAID.gov. For more information on COVID-19, please consult our COVID-19 and HIV Resources page, which includes a comprehensive set of information and advocacy Resources for Advocates. Daisy Ouya is AVAC’s Communications Advisor.

The COVID-19 pandemic demands that everyone apply their skills, resources and networks to empower communities and ease collective suffering.

The USAID-supported Coalition to Accelerate and Support Prevention Research (CASPR) was created in 2016 to expand robust advocacy efforts around HIV prevention research. We are a network of research-literate HIV prevention advocates working globally with an emphasis on sub-Saharan Africa. The Coalition places a special focus on literacy in infectious diseases, clinical research and trial design, through its long-standing partnerships with local and regional civil society, researchers, national governments, normative agencies and the media.

Although HIV and SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID-19) have many important differences, such as mode of transmission, infectivity, case-fatality and global distribution, this emerging pandemic emergency has given rise to many déjà vu moments where the well-honed HIV advocacy skills of CASPR members can be applied. And we are rising to the challenge.

Using virtual gatherings, public statements, media trainings, blogs, podcasts and social media, the Coalition is actively debunking misconceptions, conspiracy theories, anti-vaccine and anti-research narratives. We are empowering our communities to recognize the myths and outright disinformation about COVID-19 and about research, and actively promoting the only evidence-based prevention options currently known: physical distancing, handwashing, and the proper use of face masks.

We are educating communities on efforts toward vaccines and therapeutics, the research and development process, the ethical principles that govern clinical research globally, and the strengths and limitations of mathematical modelling as it applies to the COVID-19 and HIV epidemiology. In parallel, we are highlighting the importance of global cooperation in COVID-19 research through initiatives such as the COVID-19 Clinical Research Coalition. A recent global webinar and new podcast examine the huge contributions of HIV vaccine research and partnerships to the current search for COVID-19 vaccines and therapies, but also how current COVID-19 research is likely to contribute to HIV vaccine research.

Ethical research for solutions to COVID-19 requires that communities be fully engaged. The UNAIDS/AVAC Good Participatory Practice Guidelines for biomedical HIV prevention trials, the World Health Organization’s Good Participatory Practice for Trials of Emerging Pathogens (GPP-EP), and the UNAIDS/WHO Ethical Guidelines for Biomedical Research Involving Human Subjects are key references in human rights-based research conduct. Ethical considerations also demand a swift and equitable delivery of testing, treatment and prevention options, prioritizing those most at risk.

While recognizing the global havoc wreaked by the novel coronavirus pandemic, we are tracking and condemning the proliferation of dehumanizing and stigmatizing language. We are advocating strongly against branding people ‘COVID suspects’, ‘super-spreaders’ or worse. Our recent webinars with journalists in Africa and India discussed journalists’ safety in COVID-19 reporting, as well as the role and power of language in the response.

Renowned African researchers and advocates have featured on webinars we have hosted to unpack the effect of COVID-19 on HIV prevention clinical trials and health services in Africa. Several CASPR members have been asked to contribute to radio and television panels in our respective countries to discuss the pandemic and its intersection with HIV.

We are pushing for an age- and gender-responsive, human rights-based approach to COVID-19—like the decades of HIV activism that has shaped the response to HIV & AIDS. Our goal is to ensure that equity and our shared humanity is at the center of the response at all levels and confers special protection for those likely to suffer the greatest socio-economic shocks and deleterious health impacts from the COVID-19 pandemic.

It is crucial that we renew our advocacy to strengthen health systems and to expand African domestic funding for health, as countries urgently mobilize their healthcare resources to deal with the COVID-19 crisis.

As for HIV, we are tracking COVID-19 research and pipeline of products and documenting the profound effects the COVID-19 crisis is having on promising HIV efficacy trials in communities. We stand with fellow advocates and researchers who have identified the need for an efficient resumption of HIV prevention research as soon as it is safe to do so.

This HIV Vaccine Awareness Day, we celebrate and thank the clinical trial participants, health workers, researchers and funders coming together to develop durable public health solutions for humanity.