The pipeline of ARV-based prevention products includes oral pills, vaginal rings, vaginal and rectal gels, vaginal films, long-acting injectable ARVs. Not pictured are a range of multipurpose technologies in development that aim to reduce women’s risk of HIV and STIs, and provide effective contraception.
ARV-Based Prevention Pipeline
Evidence for HIV Prevention Options
What’s the big picture of ARV-based prevention trial results? This graphic shows the levels of efficacy from each major trial (the circles) with the confidence intervals around the finding (the bars at either side). Not sure what a confidence interval is? See our one-page Advocates’ Guide to Statistical Terms.
Prevention, Treatment and Human Rights
AVAC Executive Director Mitchell Warren and international gay rights activist Bisi Alimi dig into the tough realities of fighting HIV in 2016 in this interview, originally livestreamed from the AIDS 2016 conference in Durban.
Alimi asks Warren to make sense of scientific advances and new discoveries that are answering big questions and raising others. And Warren shows the imperative connection between prevention, treatment and human rights. Click to view.
Ighodaro spars with Bisi over some provocative questions about the role of Africa’s activists and an agenda for the future. View the video here.
A Map of Missed Chances: Oral PrEP Rollout and Further Research on Dapvirine Vaginal Ring
Ideally, prevention strategies would be coordinated and integrated into comprehensive programs. The field would gain vital knowledge as people respond to a selection of options. Instead, product-specific programs, such as the delivery of oral PrEP or research trials on the dapivirine vaginal ring, become available in isolation from one another. Excerpted from AVAC Report 2016: Big Data, Real People.
Biomedical Prevention in 2016 – At a Glance
A snapshot of prevention strategies underway or under development from 2015-2020. Excerpted from AVAC Report 2016: Big Data, Real People.
HIV Prevention Research Status Report
A survey of prevention strategies and the status of their safety and efficacy. Excerpted from AVAC Report 2016: Big Data, Real People.
Prevention Data Dashboards: A Key Tool for Impact on the Epidemic
Big data tells us far too little about HIV negative people in key populations. This infographic from AVAC Report 2016: Big Data, Real People, proposes the development of a Prevention Data Dashboard that would guide the field toward a deeper understanding of how to reach high-risk populations and keep them HIV negative. The dashboard would create a toolbox of visual data on referral rates, characteristics of high-risk populations, and the uptake and success of different prevention strategies.
Magical Thinking and Surge Pricing: AIDS 2016 update—Day 1
Hello from the other side—also known as “Conference Land”. The streets in and around the International Conference Center in Durban are thronged with badge-wearing delegates, the Uber taxi prices are surging, and there are already piles of publications scattered across the floor of some of the session rooms where the pre-conferences have taken place. And all this means that there are already things to report, even though the official meeting only starts tomorrow. We can’t be exhaustive, only selective. In this update we offer a quick take on some of the day’s events, focused on the theme of “magical thinking”.
(And read on for more on what you can expect in each of our daily updates from Durban.)
Magical thinking that hurts
UNAIDS in its Prevention Gap report and the Kaiser Family Foundation in its report on the financing of the response have both identified the first drop in HIV funding in five years. There is US$7.2 billion funding gap in the price tag set for achieving the 90-90-90 goal. At a civil society dialogue session with UNAIDS head Michel Sidibe, Amanda Banda of Médecins Sans Frontières challenged Dr. Sidibe not to indulge in “magical thinking” that characterizes global leaders who claim that ending AIDS is possible in the context of this dire funding trend. Tomorrow, beginning at noon, thousands more will voice the same challenge at the March for Health: Quality treatment for all. AVAC will be there—join us!
Magical thinking that excites
At the UNAIDS workshop on the 90-90-90 targets, Nittaya Phanupak of the Thai Red Cross presented on a PrEP and “test and treat” initiative designed by and with key populations, particularly MSM. This multi-pronged effort includes use of MSM social networking sites to promote PrEP and allow visitors to the site to book appointments for testing, PrEP and/or ART. Seventy-six percent of the people who booked appointments online showed up in person. The program also allows for supervised self-testing via video conference—think a Skype chat with a trained counselor—that is reaching more first-time testers and finding more new HIV-positive individuals than traditional clinic-based testing. Okay, so this isn’t magic. But it’s major in terms of meeting people where they are.
Blogging from AIDS 2016
Check out the myriad voices covering the conference, in real-time, across a range of issues at the conference. Read WhatsUpHIV.
Daily updates
Each day you can expect quick updates and links to blogs on prevention activism, links to the great science coverage from NAM and sounds of the conference from the “Truth Booth” to give a flavor of what’s going on from the plenaries to hallway chats. We will also provide a preview of the next day’s events in the Research Literacy Networking Zone (RLZN) as well as some of the sessions we’ve starred on our calendars for the following day.
Monday at the Research Literacy Networking Zone
In addition to having a Help Desk (have a question about prevention research or looking for a resource—stop in!) and a comfortable space to rest your feet, come check out all the great programming in the RLNZ (Global Village, Booth 606). See Monday’s schedule below:
10:00 – 11:00 – Communicating Complex Science Clearly (WRHI)
11:15 – 12:15 – One Woman, Many Voices (AVAC, ICW EA, WRHI)
12:30 – 13:30 – Stories in Sisterhood: Using Digital Storytelling to Enhance Knowledge and Intent to Use PrEP (Texas Woman’s University)
14:00 – 15:30 – Understanding Cure Research (IAS)
16:00 – 17:30 – Regulatory Pathway for HIV Prevention Products: The Dapivirine Ring (IPM)
[The full program and session details are available to download here.]
Follow along in real-time on Twitter, and look for the next update in your inbox tomorrow!
New! AVAC Report 2016 Big Data, Real People: The annual state of prevention advocacy
If you’re packing for Durban, we hope you’ll pause right now and add to your bag AVAC’s annual state of the field, Big Data Real People. The full PDF, Executive Summary and graphics are available here.
As always, AVAC Report is our annual advocacy analysis, with an agenda that spans the next 12 months—and beyond. We’ve designed it be a clear, succinct, actionable statement of the strengths and weakness of HIV prevention data today—and we hope you’ll join us in amplifying these messages at next week’s gathering.
Even if you’re not heading to Durban, we hope that this year’s Report will top your packing list for the journey through the next 12 months of advocacy and action.
In the Report, we argue that the state of HIV prevention data collection in 2016 is poor. One part of the solution lies in the adoption of “HIV Prevention Data Dashboards”. This tracking tool could bring the same specificity and accountability to non-ART prevention services that the “treatment cascade” of diagnosis, initiation, retention and virologic suppression does for antiretrovirals for people living with HIV.
The world cannot even pretend that ending AIDS is possible without action on non-ART prevention. We need to roll out what we have, continue R&D on what we still need, as well as scale up ART for all people living with HIV. That’s what the new UNAIDS Prevention Gap report says. That’s what AVAC has said for years. That’s what we hope you’ll say in Durban and over the coming year.
Here’s the Report, a roadmap for the coming year. Please read it, join us on the journey, let us know what you think!
Press Release
Data gaps hinder global efforts to reduce HIV infections, AVAC report warns; improved data collection and reporting needed to meet looming global AIDS targets
Contacts
Mitchell Warren, mitchell@avac.org, +1-914-661-1536
Kay Marshall, kay@avac.org, +1-347-249-6375
In a report issued today, AVAC warned that major gaps in global HIV/AIDS data stand in the way of delivering HIV prevention advances to millions of people who need them most. The report identifies several critical weaknesses of today’s HIV prevention data collection and monitoring systems and offers a concrete roadmap for closing these gaps. The report, Big Data, Real People, was issued ahead of next week’s International AIDS Conference in Durban, South Africa (July 18-22), where advocates will demand action to speed HIV prevention research and delivery.
“In an era in which big data are expected to improve essentially every part of our lives, there’s no excuse for HIV prevention data systems to be so uneven, incomplete and inefficient,” said Mitchell Warren, AVAC’s executive director. “To have any chance of ending the epidemic by 2030, we need to be collecting and accounting for every bit of useful information from every person living with or at risk for HIV.”
The need for improved HIV prevention data systems is particularly pressing given the UNAIDS “fast-track” goal to reduce new annual diagnoses to no more than 500,000 by 2020. Earlier this month, UNAIDS reported that the number of new HIV infections has remained near 2 million per year for the past decade.
Report identifies specific HIV data gaps, recommends solutions
AVAC’s report focuses on four critical data gaps that must be addressed to effectively prioritize, target and measure the impact of efforts to develop and deliver HIV prevention advances.
Specifically, today’s HIV prevention data are:
- Not sufficiently broken down by age, gender, income status, key population status and other vital categories
- Missing or incomplete for key populations most in need of prevention, including adolescent girls and young women, men who have sex with men, transgender women, and others
- Not tied to useful HIV prevention metrics and indicators, so that it is impossible to know whether prevention programs are actually averting infections and improving health
- Not effectively informing the HIV prevention research agenda
To overcome these weaknesses, the report outlines three critical strategies that should be pursued most urgently:
1. Standardize and systemize data collection and reporting for HIV prevention
Understand, measure and report on the risk level of people testing HIV-negative; create and measure linkages to evidence-based prevention for people at substantial risk; and use a standardized “Prevention Data Dashboard” to continually evaluate progress. Such dashboards would consolidate and arrange available data to illuminate critical prevention gaps and help the global community, governments and funders better conceptualize their HIV prevention programming and evaluation. AVAC’s report provides a model dashboard for decision-makers to adopt.
2. Improve use of data for adolescent girls and young women
Ensure that a growing volume of available data can be applied in a meaningful way. As a first step, funders, implementers and governments need to do a better job of defining and segmenting this population; map who is investing in what and where; put adolescent girls and young women in control of core aspects of the data-collection enterprise; and adopt gender-specific indicators tailored to girls and women.
3. Put research on the “fast-track” and countries at the center
Fit biomedical HIV prevention research into comprehensive prevention plans tied to national targets for incidence reduction. Countries and research institutions must invest time and resources in stakeholder engagement; ensure that research priorities are informed by epidemiological and other quality HIV data; and develop national research plans for meeting the prevention needs of specific, affected populations.
The new report and related resources, including downloadable graphics, are available now at www.avac.org/report2016.
###
About AVAC: Founded in 1995, AVAC is a non-profit organization that uses education, policy analysis, advocacy and a network of global collaborations to accelerate the ethical development and global delivery of AIDS vaccines, male circumcision, microbicides, PrEP and other emerging HIV prevention options as part of a comprehensive response to the pandemic.