New Resources to Help Navigate the News on HIV and COVID-19

The latest news on R&D breakthroughs for prevention of COVID-19 and HIV brings to our lips this call: it’s time to be ready for action with dogged determination to demand transparency, accountability, evidence and equity. In case you missed it, AVAC has new resources to help prepare.

Long-Acting PrEP and the HIV Prevention Pipeline

HPTN 084 Primary Study Results Webinar – Download the HPTN webinar with trial leaders from HPTN 084 who discuss the primary results of HPTN 084.

Landmark Trial in East and Southern Africa Finds Injectable PrEP Safe and Effective for Cisgender Women – Read AVAC’s statement on HPTN 084’s efficacy findings and what must come next.

The Future of ARV-Based Prevention and Biomedical HIV Prevention Trials: Results, milestones and more – Check out the updates to our infographics on the HIV prevention pipeline.

HIV-Specific Neutralizing Antibodies by Target and Broadly Neutralizing Antibody Combinations – We’ve also updated these infographics on broadly neutralizing antibodies in HIV prevention research.

AMP-ticipation: Context and concepts for understanding the AMP Trials – Read this blog to prepare for the forthcoming results from the Antibody Mediated Prevention Study.

Protecting Global Gains

Protectingglobalgains.org – At this recently launched site, Amref Health Africa, AVAC and Friends of the Global Fight have come together to document the impact COVID-19 is having on global health programs and the innovative solutions that are being developed and implemented all over the world.

Global PrEP Tracker – This update of Q3 data shows overall global uptake continued to climb even in the midst of COVID-19. The number of people who have started on PrEP has reached 773,474, an increase of more than 23 percent since the year began.

The Promise and Challenge of PrEP for Adolescent Girls and Young Women – Listen to this podcast from our colleagues at CSIS, which includes perspectives from AVAC and Wits RHI.

Efficacy & Equity: Twin Powers to End Epidemics

Why exciting results from vaccine research are just the beginning of efforts to end COVID-19 – AVAC’s Mitchell Warren penned this Devex op-ed, pointing to important lessons from the field HIV on the steep but scalable challenges of turning highly effective prevention tools into real and accessible options for people in need.

Advocate’s Guide to COVID-19 Vaccine Access – A plain-language guide covering the necessary components for equitable COVID-19 vaccine access to help inform and support advocates.

Treatment Action Group and AVAC Statement on Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine Efficacy Announcement – Read our statement with the Treatment Action Group (TAG) to learn more about what must come next to move forward with COVID-19 vaccines.

Efficacy News from Second COVID-19 Vaccine Trial Underscores Need for Transparency and Cooperation between Outgoing and Incoming US Administrations – Read this statement joint statement from AVAC and TAG to learn how and why US leaders must put people ahead of politics.

At AVAC, we’re watching for more COVID-19 vaccines that may soon join the two now showing efficacy, while our eyes remain firmly on HIV prevention options still in the pipeline. At the same time, no less focus is needed on programs and policies for equitable access. Use these resources to work with health leaders of all stripes to build the systems the world needs for prevention to become a reality everywhere it’s needed.

Biomedical HIV Prevention Trials: Results, milestones and more

This graphic shows the updated status of large-scale prevention trials through 2022 and the impact of COVID-19 on each trial.

Another version of this graphic is available here (same content, different visual Treatment U=U).

Vaccine Efficacy Trials Pipeline

This infographic shows a timeline for each of the three major vaccine efficacy trials proposed or underway now.

Vaccines Research Pipeline

This graphic shows the many types of Vaccines undergoing research, categorized by the immune response they are designed to elicit—broadly neutralizing antibodies, non-neutralizing antibodies, T-cell responses or a combination of these.

AVAC Report 2019: With 2020 targets sure to be missed, we ask Now What?

Report cover

Today, AVAC released Now What?, our 2019 annual report on the state of the HIV prevention field. Each year, the AVAC Report frames the most pressing advocacy issues facing the HIV response. At the threshold of 2020, it’s clear that global goals for HIV prevention will miss the mark by a long shot.

Though important progress has been made, the crisis UNAIDS called out in 2016 persists today with new infections around 1.7 million annually, a far cry from the 2020 target of fewer than 500,000.

So, we asked ourselves, Now What?, and answered with cross-cutting analysis and an advocacy agenda to match.

FIRST, we call for leadership that is bold, visible and activist, from the new head of UNAIDS, to houses of parliament to civil society coalitions: take uncompromising stances, demand accountability, speak out for intersectional issues of race, gender, class and climate. This work needs to be funded, full-throttle and fearless.

SECOND, we call for the use of today’s most recent evidence to guide new prevention targets that will pave the way for epidemic control. Clear milestones for the prevention research pipeline must be set. Investments over the past decades have provided us with the prevention options we have today, and much-needed new strategies are under now investigation. The field needs targets for prevention research that people can understand and influence.

THIRD, we call for multilayered prevention approaches that are centered around the person, not the virus. Since last World AIDS Day, we’ve learned again, perhaps most strikingly from the ECHO trial, about the dynamic needs of women for HIV and pregnancy prevention. The complexity of translating results into policy, bring renewed urgency to the need for comprehensive HIV prevention and reproductive health approaches. Multilayered prevention incorporates multipurpose strategies (i.e., products that prevent both pregnancy and HIV) within programs designed to address structural barriers (i.e., policy reform, transforming community norms, facilitating educational empowerment).

2020 will be a pivotal year—join us in calling on leaders, from the grassroots to global capitals, to make 2020 a turning point, when siloes come down, crises are transformed by innovation, and prevention is center stage in the fight against HIV.

Happy reading, and we’d love to hear how you answer Now What?

AVAC’s “3D” View of the World: 2019 and beyond

This infographic lays out AVAC’s top-line recommendations from AVAC Report 2019: Now What? The recommendations fall into three categories: deliver — prevention programs whose impact is well-measured and -defined; demonstrate — next-generation engagement for next-generation trials; develop — new targets for the post-2020 world.

HVAD 2019: Vaccine science needs your support!

[UPDATE: Slides and recordings from both webinars are now available. Links are provided below.]

HIV Vaccine Awareness Day (HVAD) 2019, on May 18, comes with promising headlines about advances in potential vaccines for HIV and other diseases that imperil public health. But, 2019 has also seen outbreaks of a highly infectious, vaccine-preventable disease, the result of misinformation and fear being spread by anti-vaccine campaigners.

This HVAD, AVAC has an updated toolkit of resources for translating HIV vaccine research with a renewed sense of urgency, and two dedicated hashtags to rally the call on social media: #HIVvaccineAware and #HVAD2019. We hope you’ll join the conversation — with the updated HVAD 2019 toolkit and our upcoming webinars (below and online)!

Explore all of our updated HVAD resources:

broadly Neutralizing Antibody graphic

One of AVAC’s HVAD Toolkit infographics showing bNAb combination research.

We also hope you will join two upcoming webinars:

Resources like these are essential for public understanding and support for vaccine research. Vaccines are not simple products. They require sustained investment to develop, they can be challenging to manufacture, and just as challenging to explain to potential users.

This HVAD, join us in thanking the ongoing dedication and ingenuity – of scientists, trial participants and community advocates – to find a vaccine against HIV, and let us renew our commitment to advance public understanding and support for vaccine research, development and delivery.

HIV-Specific Neutralizing Antibodies – Targets and research status

Numerous studies, both early and late phase, are investigating the efficacy of neutralizing antibodies. This infographic shows the ongoing studies and the differing locations they target on the virus.

One Timeline, Two Stories, One Message: Putting trials and targets together

One problem with HIV prevention agendas is that they either live in an eternal present or in a far-off future. It’s “work with what we’ve got, which is condoms and VMMC and a little bit of PrEP”, or it’s “nothing can change without an AIDS vaccine”. The future depends on using what’s available, better and more widely, without ever losing sight of what’s in the pipeline.

As the figures below show, in the very same timeframe that the world will miss its critical target for incidence reduction and scale-up of primary prevention, several trials will release results that could change the future. 2020 will be a time of hope and reckoning. But only if the two stories start to be told as one.

HIV Prevention Research and Demonstration Sites in South Africa

This map demonstrates the breadth of HIV prevention research and demonstration projects in South Africa by site and type (e.g. daily oral PrEP demo projects, ARV-based rings, long-acting injectable PrEP, preventative Vaccines, antibodies, hormonal contraceptives). This map was developed by Wits RHI with support from AVAC as part of the Coalition to Accelerate and Support Prevention Research. This graphic first appeared in AVAC Report 2017: Mixed messages and how to untangle them.