Decolonizing Global Health in 2024 and Beyond

In the year ahead, staking out a course that will advance the HIV response and global health equity faces serious headwinds.

Several African countries are seeing historic attacks on civil rights aimed at persecuting the LGBTQIA+ community, and most notably, Uganda is embroiled in crises with the enactment of Anti-Homosexuality Act. PEPFAR Re-authorization has been stalled by utter dysfunction in the US House of Representatives, the same body that has proposed massive cuts in domestic HIV funding. Negotiations on the WHO’s Pandemic Accord have so far failed to prioritize meaningful commitments to equity—jeopardizing global preparedness against future health threats. And at least 43 countries are holding elections in 2024, with several countries, including the US, facing serious threats from authoritarian candidates.  

But in HIV prevention, there’s also momentum. The scale-up of PrEP began accelerating in 2021 and has kept apace, with more than 6.2 million people initiated oral PrEP, and another approximately 4000 people have initiated either injectable cabotegravir or the dapivirine vaginal ring. If planning, policies and programs get it right and offer choices in programs that are co-designed by communities that need prevention most, modeling indicates the world could reach UN targets of 10 million PrEP users by 2025. But what does it take to ensure choice, what priorities will ensure policies, programs will serve the communities burdened by HIV? 

Decolonizing global health can and must be a guide star for these efforts. In 2024, it’s time to double down. Decolonizing global health is not a dream. It’s not an “extra” to reach for only when it’s easy. It’s not wishful thinking. Decolonizing global health is a cornerstone in reaching global targets, making prevention a reality, ending the epidemic, and preparing for the next one. 

It demands changes across the field, from research to rollout. AVAC is tracking this progress, developing strategic resources, and supporting the advocates who know that global health will advance or decline depending on progress in key areas:

Empowering Community Leaders & Following Community Priorities

Models of leadership that center communities necessarily involve money but must go beyond the size of the check and whose name is on it. New structures are needed, based on collaboration, transparency, and trust. The COMPASS coalition is pioneering a model to do just that. Read more about this exciting work here.

Pursuing a People’s Research Agenda

A community driven agenda is needed to define research questions and recommendations for HIV prevention research, rollout and investments. With an active HIV pipeline in research and development that is increasingly weighted toward early-phase science, a need for unstinting support for vaccine research, and momentum in cure research, it’s critical for informed and intensive community advocacy to shape the research enterprise. See the pipeline here. 

Program for Choice 

The promise of new options in HIV prevention must not be squandered in siloed programs, or by poorly planned supply chains, or because of disconnected policy decisions. People have diverse needs and face complex challenges; ending HIV depends on finding the option that works best for each individual. Read more about the choice initiatives and the Choice Manifesto and the Global HIV Prevention Roadmap for Key Populations.

Create a New Global Architecture Founded in Equity for Pandemic Readiness

When the next pandemic hits, allocating tools to the most vulnerable is the most effective and efficient way to fight it. County commitments, engagement with civil society, funding levels, and how well planning incorporates equity as a principle has yet to be secured in the Pandemic Accord or other agreements related pandemic planning. Advocates have a role to play in demanding engagement and ensuring equity. Find resources to keep you up to date on the issue here. 

Embrace the Role of Prevention in Global Targets

To end AIDS as a public health threat by 2030, prevention efforts must make dramatic strides to reach fewer than 370,000 new infections by 2025. As the UNAIDS HIV Prevention Roadmap documents, the most successful HIV responses have come from countries who “have directed resources towards high-impact combination HIV prevention programs and supported and worked with community-led responses that reach the populations and places most in need”. UNAIDS targets will continue to falter at the global level if the field fails to learn the lessons of countries such as El Salvador, Kenya or Thailand where incidence saw steep reductions by centering prevention programs around the needs of key populations.   

In the months to come, AVAC will be following progress toward these goals and reaching out to you to discuss, debate, collaborate and unite.

What is PrEP Access Right Now and What’s Next in 2024?

AVAC is thrilled to see the launch last week of injectable cabotegravir for PrEP (injectable CAB) in Zambia—the first program outside of the US to do so. And earlier this week the Desmond Tutu Health Foundation in South Africa also announced “the first jab” of injectable CAB administered in its FASTPrEP study. This news comes on the heels of another important gain—the announcement of a new licensing agreement that will double the supplies of the dapivirine vaginal ring (DVR) across Africa. 

All represent significant milestones that we hope will be the first of many in 2024. Leveraging these achievements so that people who need and want HIV prevention can access choice is the prevailing question on our minds at AVAC. Choice is the key: it requires robust investment in the policies, planning and programs that ensure every proven product—oral PrEP, injectable CAB and the DVR—are included in the package of HIV prevention options, along with sustained research and development of new interventions.

So what is the status of access among PrEP options as 2024 begins?

As it stands, oral PrEP is offered in 122 countries with cumulative initiations reaching more than 6 million (2012 – December 2023). (Check out the Global PrEP Tracker for details.) Trends in initiations saw great progress over the last two years, but to reach UNAIDS targets of 10 million PrEP users by 2025, initiations of oral PrEP alone will not be enough. People will need to find an option they can use for as long as they need it. PrEP coverage, seeing the most people possible using an option that works as long as they need it, regardless of product type, is the goal—with programs and products to support them.  

Injectable CAB supplies are an important factor. Late in October 2023, Injectable CAB’s developer, ViiV, forecasted a 40% increase in available doses to low- and middle-income countries, reaching 1.2 million doses through 2025. These doses are headed to implementation science (IS) studies that are evaluating how to scale up delivery and to national programs supported by PEPFAR and Global Fund, including Zambia’s. 

Zambia is now the second country in the world, after the USA, to roll out injectable CAB outside the planned and ongoing IS studies. And more countries are expected to follow in Zambia’s path, including Malawi and Zimbabwe. Check out our Country Planning Matrix that tracks this progress of injectable CAB as well DVR. 

In addition, 11 countries have approved the DVR, and 38 implementation science studies are delivering or planning to deliver injectable CAB and/or the DVR. Check out our Integrated Study Tracker that catalogues these projects. 

As these products start arriving in country, key issues must be addressed:

  • increasing supplies and obtaining lower prices for both products;
  • ensuring the delivery mechanisms for rolling out injectable CAB and DVR are integrated into prevention programs that are well-designed to reach those who could benefit from PrEP products;
  • establishing how to deliver acceptable HIV prevention services to a wide range of populations, including adolescents, pregnant and lactating people, sex workers, LGBTQ+ communities and people who inject drugs; and
  • advancing a learning agenda across programs that are delivering HIV prevention—inclusive of injectable CAB and DVR—to ensure information, lessons and insights are shared.

But above all, effective delivery must be defined by delivering choice through programs where end-users are supported to select the option that best fits their lives. AVAC’s Wawira Nyagah and Mitchell Warren outlined these issues—and the lessons from oral PrEP that need to be leveraged—in a recent commentary in Bhekisisa: Bending the curve: What a decade-long roll-out of the anti-HIV pill can teach the world. 

As 2024 begins, at AVAC we see possibility. PrEP initiation trends, country approvals for new products, program launches, and efforts at transparency and coordination could pay enormous dividends. But fulfilling this promise is not certain. It depends on overcoming systemic challenges around access and choice.

Let’s not waste 2024.

What You Should Know About the FAPP, GAPP and PEPFAR Reauthorization

By Kenyon Farrow

Engaging the US government is vital to advocacy for HIV prevention, as one of the world’s largest contributors to implementation and research and development. The reach and scale of US funded global health programs have profound impact on the lives and health of people in the US and around the world. Two coalitions, founded by advocates, make it their central mission to inform and influence the US federal government to advance funding and policies to end the HIV epidemic.  

In 2024, their work will be as important as at any time in the history of HIV advocacy; as funding for US programs is at stake and advocacy continues for the reauthorization of PEPFAR, one of the greatest US foreign policy and global development achievements in history.

AVAC’s John Meade was just elected co-chair of the Federal AIDS Policy Partnership (FAPP), a national coalition of more than 120+ local, regional, and national organizations advocating for federal funding, legislation and policy to end the HIV epidemic in the United States. John and co-chairs, Mike Weir of NASTAD and Kathie Hiers of AIDS Alabama,  will support the work of seven affiliated working groups, including the AIDS Budget and Appropriation Coalition and the Research Working Group, to produce analysis, build relationships with federal entities, and champion policies and funding that are essential to making progress.  

And AVAC’s Suraj Madoori co-chairs the Global AIDS Policy Partnership(GAPP), a 70 member coalition that leads advocacy for continued robust funding, expansion and improvement of US global HIV/AIDS programming through PEPFAR and the Global Fund. With co-chairs Katie Lapides Coester of EGPAF and Shannon Kellman, formerly of Friends of the Global Fight, now at UNAIDS, this coalition — comprised of civil society and faith-based organizations, funders, professional membership organizations and organizations that implement programs — will continue working every channel to spotlight success, combat misinformation and seize opportunities to secure a new five-year reauthorization of PEPFAR. See AVAC’s blog here.  

Since its creation in 2003 and through previous 5-year reauthorizations, PEPFAR has received near universal, bipartisan support in Congress. This past year, partisan lobbyists and their congressional allies derailed easy passage of its next 5-year reauthorization. In 2024, the GAPP will be mobilizing against efforts to politicize this singularly successful program, and will be working for renewed bipartisan support through the final resolution of federal budget negotiations.  

The efforts of the GAPP and the FAPP will remain essential to ensure sustained funding for efforts to end the epidemic, to save overall HIV funding and advance a national PrEP program in the US, and to win the reauthorization of PEPFAR. Be sure to watch this space for updates. 

Webinars to Look Out for in February!

2024 is off and running and a slew of webinars are on the calendar. This selection of topics is both broad and deep, providing updates on the pipeline from cure to vaccines, insights on critical advocacy, a conversation with the new director of NIAID, and opportunities for you to engage. Scroll down for what’s coming up and recordings of webinars from December and January that you may have missed.  

Coming up!

AVAC in Conversation with NIAID’s Jeanne Marrazzo

February 27, 11:30 am – 12:00 pm EST 

Join AVAC in conversation with the new Director of NIAID, Jeanne Marrazzo. Register here.

The New Public Health Order: How is Africa preparing for pandemics?

February 29, 9:00-10:30 am EST 

WACI Health and The Choice Agenda invite you to join us for a webinar introducing key initiatives of the Africa CDC and the African Union. It will illuminate roles for civil society and community engagement. Register here.

The Adolescent Medicine Trials Network (ATN): Research addressing HIV health inequities among US adolescents and young adults

Join The Choice Agenda for an overview of the newest cycle of the Adolescent Medicine Trials Network! This webinar includes highlights of: ATN 165: Linking Youth to PrEP Services, which tests an innovative mobile delivery and mHealth intervention for PrEP adherence and persistence among sexual minority men; ATN 167: Legal, Economic, and Affirming Peer Support (LEAP) for transgender and gender diverse youth; and how the network prioritizes and amplifies the voices of youth directly impacted by the ATN’s pivotal research. Register here.

Advocacy Navigator Program Info Session

February 13, 10:00-11:00 am EST

This webinar is intended for anyone interested in applying to participate in AVAC’s Advocacy Navigator program. The session will provide an overview of the program, expectations, eligibility, and application process, followed by Q&A with the AVAC team. 

In case you missed it!

Reporting the African Science Story: Decoding scientific research to support public health in Africa

Through the Media Science Café Program, AVAC partners with health media associations in Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe to bring journalists together with researchers, implementers, civil society, policy makers, regulators and policy makers to build relationships that will foster accurate reporting of HIV, COVID and other science or health stories in those countries. Learn about the model! Recording, slides and resources.

PrEPVacc: An in-depth look at the trial, and what’s next

This webinar reviewed key aspects of PrEPVacc, including its innovative study design, implementation, integrated social science, and data analysis plans. An engaging conversation about what we’ve learned from PrEPVacc, what we can still learn, and what this may mean for the HIV prevention field. Recording, slides and resources.

Cervical Cancer Awareness Month Webinar Series

Check out our 4-part webinar series on cervical cancer, which featured a deep dive on: what cervical cancer is, who is impacted, and prevention and treatment options; advocacy strategies to bring more attention to cervical cancer and its impact on communities; options for screening and treating cervical cancer along with ongoing research; and the impact of cervical cancer on key populations and those vulnerable to HIV infections. Recording, slides and resources.

HIV Cure and the Environment: How location informs cure research

This webinar reviewed core concepts discussed in the previous webinar, Let’s Talk About HIV Cure Research: An Introduction to the science under investigation, and introduced how the environment may impact cure strategies. Recording, slides and resources.

Learn more about the townhall discussion on Black Gay Men and HIV in the US featuring influential figures in the Black Gay community, including Ace Robinson, Daniel D. Driffin, and Kenyon Farrow by checking out highlights on AVAC’s Twitter page and watch the full recording. 

Thanks for checking out these conversations. We hope you will join us in these rich discussions and watch this space for future webinars!  

Now accepting applications for the 2024 Advocacy Navigator program

Advocacy Navigator program accepting applications

Dear Advocate,  

Following a successful 2023 program, AVAC is delighted to launch the 2024 Advocacy Navigator program and invites applications from emerging advocates from Eastern and Southern Africa interested in strengthening their skills in HIV prevention advocacy. Applications for the Advocacy Navigator program are now being accepted through 8 March 2024. 

Find details about the Advocacy Navigator program and application process here. And join us for an informational webinar on Tuesday, 13 February. 

The Advocacy Navigator combines training and mentorship for young and emerging advocates in the field of HIV prevention advocacy. The program brings together a small group of individuals for online knowledge- and skills-sharing sessions and pairs them with a mentor from AVAC’s alumni Fellows’ network to apply their learning to a community advocacy project. The program begins with three months of coursework and project development, followed by three months of implementation, when advocates work on their plans. 

Twelve advocates from nine countries across Africa completed the Advocacy Navigator program in 2023. Their community projects ranged from advocacy for the introduction of and access to new prevention methods including the dapivirine vaginal ring and injectable PrEP, to the need for more available data for key populations, to a call for expanding choice in HIV prevention. Read testimonials from their experience here. 

“It’s not a one-size-fits-all approach; rather, it’s about recognizing the diversity of needs and implementing interventions that truly make a difference. It’s been eye-opening to witness how empowering individuals with the knowledge and skills to advocate for their rights and educate their peers can be a catalyst for change. This project has instilled in me the belief that advocacy is not just about speaking up; it’s about equipping those affected by an issue with the tools they need to be the agents of change themselves.”  

– Doreen Moraa Moracha, Advocacy Navigator 2023 (Kenya) 

Since launching the AVAC Fellows program in 2009, AVAC has recognized the imperative to invest in mobilizing a growing cadre of HIV prevention advocates. The Advocacy Navigator program is leveraging the strength of this extraordinary alumni community to sustainably expand this model through a short online learning and mentorship program to a larger number of people. 

Find the application and additional information at AVAC.org/navigator. 

Even a baseline level of meaningful civil society engagement within international fora will do

We cannot build effective health infrastructure by erecting barriers to civil society and community leadership.

By Sam Rick, Multilateral Engagement and Pandemic Preparedness Advocacy Specialist at AVAC

From the beginning of the global HIV/AIDS response movement, often before governments and policymakers became engaged, civil society and communities have led the charge. In addition to providing direct prevention and treatment services – particularly to those often excluded from the health system due to discrimination, stigma, affordability, and physical access barriers – civil society organizations (CSOs) serve crucial roles holding governments and policymakers accountable, leading activists to demand essential services, and building trust within the community. 

This legacy is felt in the operations of the President’s Emergency Program for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB, and Malaria (GFATM). Both give civil society and affected community groups explicit roles in their governance and operation and provide direct funding to support their efforts or build capacity where needed. These programs have contributed to the growth of CSOs across HIV-burdened countries and increased recognition of the impact that strong civil society and community engagement can have on health outcomes. They support government program implementation by monitoring delivery at the local level, use their knowledge and expertise of hard to reach populations to inform program design, and urge public and private partners to act on emerging issues where political will and commitment falls short. The transformative impact of strong CSO and community engagement is the most important and enduring lesson from the global HIV/AIDS response.

Despite the hard-fought battles to secure the legitimacy and recognition of the baseline requirement of civil society engagement in the HIV/AIDS response over decades, new initiatives in other health areas have failed to meaningfully build upon existing engagement mechanisms and fully integrate CSOs as an essential driver of policy and programming. While some initiatives have opened up limited room for CSO engagement, the space at the table has only been secured after public criticism and organized campaigns. Advocates continue to be forced to have the same fight over and over with each new program or fund or secretariat, fighting to secure the absolute minimum of two voting seats and consultation before decisions are made. 

This is not a complete surprise. Globally, civic spaces are shrinking as global anti-rights movements are gaining momentum. Growing insecurity in the wake of international conflict flare-ups gives policymakers justification for rationalizing the limitation of meaningful civil society engagement. This dynamic has plagued international negotiations that had previously instituted meaningful engagement structures, including in the scaling back of civil society representation at the World Health Assembly, refusal to sanction a formal engagement mechanism for UN High Level Meetings, continuously dismissed requests for even observer status during Pandemic Accord negotiations, and hostility toward civil society and community advocates at international fora such as ICASA. For many governments, the global circumstances necessitate bypassing consultation and opting for rapid, decisive action, resulting in severely missed opportunities to improve health outcomes and program effectiveness. Beyond just a more limiting environment, the fiscal environment is shrinking as well, and meaningful engagement is costly. Bringing people to the table and giving them the space to truly influence decisions takes time and effort. Gathering wide input can often change scope and plans, sometimes throwing champions of a given initiative back to the drawing board.

Yet the cost of doing business and delaying start up in order to be sufficiently inclusive is an essential investment – what good is it to get money out the door quickly if it doesn’t go where it is needed? If services aren’t used, products expire, and disease spreads further? The short-term trade-offs of meaningful engagement are real, but they can be mitigated. We have over 20 years of experience to build on and leverage, and civil society and community advocates have decades of expertise in direct global health governance and service delivery to draw from. And as anyone who has spent any time in a Global Fund board meeting will tell you, there is little basis in some of the fears governments have around open, consultative processes. They do not descend into petty squabbles or dead-ends. They do not slow action or stymy decisions – for example, the Global Fund, with three voting seats allocated to civil society and communities, was among the most agile institutions during the COVID-19 crisis.

We call on decision makers, government representatives, and multilateral institutional leaders to enshrine a baseline level of meaningful civil society engagement practices within international fora, and to fight back against the growing tide of penning in valuable and essential expertise and networks.

We have seen in the 40 years of HIV/AIDS that meaningful engagement really turns the tide where biomedical interventions have plateaued in their usefulness. Preventing, preparing, and responding to disease outbreaks necessitates population trust, understanding of regional or cultural ways of working, geographical limitations, and true community needs. We cannot build effective health infrastructure by erecting barriers to civil society and community leadership.

New issue of POSITIVELY AWARE points the way towards a more equitable future

By Kenyon Farrow

In many ways the world is entering an era of HIV prevention that many of us have spent the last 40 years fighting for— there now exists multiple options for preventing HIV that are safe, highly effective and easy to use. 2012 saw the introduction of the first ARV-based prevention option—daily oral PrEP. And over the past two years, WHO recommended, and several national regulatory agencies have approved, injectable ARVs for treatment and prevention, as well as the dapvirine vaginal ring.  

While these advances are something to celebrate, this is far from the end of the road. Technological gains only go as far as people’s awareness of them, desire to use them, and access to them. And this is where we — as a public health community and as a planet of humans — struggle. Just like with the first ARV therapies in the mid 1990s, and the first PrEP pill for prevention a decade ago, we’re now four years into the FDA approval of the first long-acting ARV therapy and we are several years away from scaling up these long-acting medications and truly seeing the impact they can have on the lives of people (whether living with HIV or in need of PrEP), and on the HIV epidemic itself.  

It takes the HIV response far too long to move these innovative inventions to the point where they become medical miracles, experienced by everyone who needs and wants them, regardless of race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, sex assigned at birth, pregnancy status or income. 

There is a new special issue of the magazine POSITIVELY AWARE, co-edited by Kenyon Farrow, AVAC’s communications director, and Jim Pickett, AVAC’s senior advisor and lead of the Choice Agenda, that explores the impact of long-acting injectable treatment and PrEP. The articles, including a piece co-authored by John Meade, AVAC’s senior policy manager, and Danielle Campbell of PrEP in Black America and longtime AVAC partner, speak to the humans involved in downstream research, and what their experiences as patients, researchers, advocates and medical providers of long-acting treatment and PrEP teach us about how these products could be transformative. These stories make clear how far we still have to go to change our health systems so that they can meet their maximum potential. 

AVAC will continue our work to advocate for global equity in access to prevention and treatment in all their current and future forms. We celebrate this issue of POSITIVELY AWARE as one collection of voices helping to point the way towards a more equitable future. 

New COMPASS Governance Structure to Accelerate HIV Policy and Advocacy

Pangaea Zimbabwe selected as new Secretariat

AVAC and Pangaea Zimbabwe are thrilled to announce Pangaea Zimbabwe’s new leadership of the Coalition to build Momentum, Power, Activism, Strategy & Solidarity (COMPASS) Africa, a historic milestone in the development of innovative models for power-sharing in coalition and an important step toward decolonizing global health.

Launched in 2017, COMPASS Africa is a civil society coalition with 29 organizations working in three countries as well as regionally and globally, using data-driven advocacy to improve the HIV response with high-impact campaigns. Its achievements to date have set new standards for mobilization and advocacy, improving laws and policies, increasing investment in programs, elevating the leadership of affected communities in the HIV response, and holding all stakeholders to account for targets, commitments and impact.

In December 2023, Pangaea Zimbabwe signed a new two-year, $4.9 million grant agreement with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation as the new secretariat of COMPASS Africa. For the first 6 years, AVAC served in this role, and worked with a coalition-wide governance committee to develop a clear transition plan for COMPASS to be led by African civil society organizations.

“Since 2017, we’ve been breaking new ground under COMPASS Africa. We’ve expanded our networks and brought together the superpowers of new and seasoned advocates who have diverse strengths and have joined together to develop and share technical expertise and winning strategies,” said Imelda Mahaka, executive director of Pangaea Zimbabwe. “This is a foundation of collaboration, knowledge-exchange and trust that can and will accelerate innovative advocacy under African leadership. We are so proud to take this step with AVAC and with support and collaboration of the entire consortium.”

COMPASS Africa supports coalitions and organizations based in Malawi, Tanzania, the United States and Zimbabwe, and COMPASS Africa members are currently leading more than two dozen active campaigns to advance HIV prevention and treatment. 

“From its founding, COMPASS Africa pursued a vision of collective power and shared decision-making that planned for a future in which an African-based organization would assume leadership as a vital step to sustaining this essential work,” said Mitchell Warren, executive director of AVAC. “The communities who are most affected by HIV uniquely understand their context, challenges and opportunities—their leadership is essential to developing solutions that work. With inclusive governance structures formalized, including Pangaea Zimbabwe as the new secretariat, that leadership is in place, and we are excited that AVAC will continue to be part of the coalition in its new form.”

“As planned from the inception of COMPASS Africa, coalition members are taking their highly successful model to the next level. We are jointly investing in the long-term success of African leadership because it is absolutely essential to breaking cycles that perpetuate inequity and that stall progress in the HIV response,” said Justine MacWilliam, senior program manager and COMPASS Africa partner at AVAC. 

Along with the handover of the secretariat from AVAC to Pangaea Zimbabwe, COMPASS Africa has developed a new governance manual strengthening operating structures for the growing coalition. AVAC will continue as a COMPASS Africa sub-grantee and technical partner focused on advocacy strategy and tactics, including ensuring community priorities are influencing global-level HIV policies, funders and programs.

“This effort put a premium on creating structures to deepen and sustain transparency, accountability, effectiveness and continuing growth within the coalition. COMPASS has a track record of remarkable achievements, this new leadership structure ensures we leverage lessons learned, scale up our advocacy, strengthen each other, and set ambitious goals for impacting the HIV response,” said Dr. Lilian Benjamin Mwakyosi, executive director of DARE Organization in United Republic of Tanzania and co-chair of the COMPASS Governance Working Group.

COMPASS Africa has been unparalleled in testing and succeeding with new models for transnational collaboration. The results have brought campaign after campaign that have marshalled the power of data-driven advocacy to advance community priorities and have convinced policymakers to do the right thing. With these latest innovations, COMPASS Africa is now pioneering a leadership structure that offers the field a sustainable model for decolonizing global health.

New Resources to Support Understanding of Scientific Research

We are delighted to share our new Translation Index, a resource for journalists and advocates, to help bridge the gap between scientific research and community understanding. The Translation Index offers health journalists and advocates accurate translations of commonly used and essential scientific and medical terms in 10 African languages.

Journalists and community health workers are often at the forefront of helping people understand complicated science and health terms in their own languages. Providing information in the language it will be reported minimizes errors and helps journalists reach a wider audience. AVAC is grateful for the Sabin Vaccine Institute‘s support in the development of the Translation Index.

“Since many journalists in community radios may not be highly specialized, the translation of technical science terms into vernacular languages is essential for audience comprehension. This becomes particularly relevant during crises, as witnessed during the pandemic when different radio stations provided varying names for COVID-19 in the same language.”

—Esther Nakkazi, founder of the Health Journalists Network in Uganda

Since 2012, AVAC has collaborated with health journalist associations in East and Southern Africa through its Media Science Café Program to strengthen the capacity of journalists to report on HIV prevention research. In 2020, AVAC and partners  expanded this work to include COVID-19 science. Today, AVAC partners with health media associations in Kenya, Malawi, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe to bring journalists together with researchers, implementers, civil society, policy makers, regulators and policy makers to build relationships that will foster accurate reporting of HIV, COVID-19 and other science or health stories in those countries.
 
Join us, Tuesday, January 23 for a webinar, Reporting the African Science Story: Decoding scientific research to support public health in Africa where we will share highlights from our Media Science Café Program. Click here to register.

“Having a platform in Malawi for communicating science in local languages is a great innovation that will also enable more of the population to be able to follow science, research and other innovation in global and public health from a scientific perspective and participate in the discourse.”

– Dingaan Mithi, journalist and JournAIDS program manager

We hope you will visit the Translation Index and join us on the 23rd.

Remembering a Legacy and Celebrating AVAC Fellow Alumni

For over a decade, the AVAC Advocacy Fellows Program has played a role in shaping the landscape of HIV prevention by strengthening leadership skills and building a growing and evolving network of fierce and unstoppable advocates. Last year, AVAC released A Legacy of Impact: The power and reach of AVAC’s Advocacy Fellows to tell the story of the Fellows program and to share testimonies of impact from research to policy, and beyond.  

Today, on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, a day dedicated to the importance of advocacy to influence change, AVAC honors its nearly 100 Fellow alumni and applauds our most recent class which closed out their fellowship in December.  

Read on for testimonies from the AVAC 2022/2023 Fellows and explore their work in their individual pages. 

AVAC 2022/2023 Fellows in their words

Learn about Ruth’s work around the approval and rollout of the dual prevention pill (DPP) in Uganda here. 

Learn about Onward’s work with engaging religious institutions on adolescent sexual and reproductive health in Zimbabwe here.

Learn about Prince’s work ensuring access to injectable CAB for PrEP for trans people in Malawi here. 

Learn about Catherine’s work in the rollout and implementation of the dapivirine vaginal ring for adolescents and young women (AGYW) in Tanzania here. 

Learn about Natasha’s advocacy for the approval of the dapivirine vaginal ring and injectable CAB for PrEP in Zambia here. 

Learn about Peter’s work with differentiated service delivery of PrEP and expediting new PrEP tools in Lesotho here. 

Learn about Elizabeth’s work advocating for sex workers and people who use drugs (PUD) here. 

Learn about Liyema’s work on advocating and implementing the decriminalization of sex work in South Africa here.  

Get to know the full AVAC Fellows community by exploring the full alumni database and stay tuned to meet the 2024/2025 class to be announced in April!