Much Accomplished, Much to Do

2024–2025 Fellows Progress Update

As we enter a new year, we also enter the midway point of the AVAC 2024-2025 Fellowship program, which runs 18 months. Fellows and their projects are taking giant strides in new areas of advocacy, and realizing strategic wins toward epidemic-bending goals, with much more to come! For more than a decade, Fellows have tackled critical issues for the field, focusing on U=U and new technologies, including long-acting PrEP, the Dual Prevention Pill (DPP) and the dapivirine ring (DVR). 2024-2025 fellows have added new areas of focus including on Pandemic Prevention, Preparedness and Response (PPPR); anal health; and HIV prevention in prisons. 

Here are some of their accomplishments of the 2024–2025 Fellows Program

Ezra Meme (Uganda) is AVAC’s first Fellow to advance a Pandemic Prevention, Preparedness and Response (PPPR) agenda. He contributed to the development of the Uganda National Action Plan for Health and Security to bolster public health emergency centers throughout the country. While the billions committed in Ugandan shillings still need to be secured, Ezra will continue to monitor and advocate for this unprecedented public health project. He also successfully advocated for the government’s launch of the Antimicrobial National Action plan. And, he’s been closely monitoring Mpox, advocating for a digital mapping tool to track its control efforts. 

Bahati Thomas Haule (Tanzania) is laser focused on scaling up and normalizing U=U and the accompanying need for timely viral load testing and results. She’s gotten buy-in from PEPFAR and UNAIDS to support a substantial U=U media campaign and she’s collaborating with the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation to spread knowledge of their model U=U program for “nationwide utilization.” She’s also in dialogue with Global Fund to support increased lab capacity and provider training. Bahati presented to the UK Parliament on the need to support LEN for PrEP and for World AIDS Day, she published an opinion piece in the Swahili newspaper Mwananchi, advocating for ARV-based prevention. 

Mokone Rantsoelaba (Lesotho) is AVAC’s first Fellow to advocate for HIV services in prison. After visiting nearly all his country’s correctional facilities, he released an assessment of HIV services for the incarcerated in Lesotho. His work was so well received that he was asked to integrate many of his recommendations into Lesotho’s Correctional Services Healthcare Policy, including the training of providers and fast-tracking all new prevention methods for scale-up in prisons. Mokone initiated and continues to convene the Southern African Development Community (SADC) regional correctional institutions along with the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) to share best practices. Mokone has also been invited as a guest columnist for one of Lesotho’s top publications.   

Sammy Anyula Gorigo (Kenya) is AVAC’s first Fellow to spotlight anal health. Specifically, Sammy’s been promoting HPV vaccines, screening and treatment for all men, particularly gay and bisexual men and other MSM. Thus far, he integrated HPV screening as a standard of practice into Nairobi County Health Management. He updated two separate guidelines to include anal health care for men—Kenya’s Standard Operating Manual for Prevention and Management of STIs and the National Guidelines for HIV and STI Programming with Key and Vulnerable Populations. He’s been invited to PEPFAR’s COP planning and writing process to develop an anal package of care. Lastly, for World AIDS Day, he published an opinion piece landing in The Nation, The Star and The Standard.  

Rhoda Msiska (Zambia) is ensuring a swift introduction of the DPP. She’s earned a leading advocacy role, engaging the Ministry of Health to fast-track and de-medicalize PrEP and ensuring DPP inclusion in the national PrEP implementation plan. She’s working with the MoH to set aside DPP funding through the Global Fund and taking to the radio airwaves to create demand. Importantly, Rhoda has secured a first meeting with ZAMRA, Zambia’s regulatory body, to encourage moving forward with civil society support. And, at R4P Conference in Lima Peru in October, Rhoda spoke on a panel addressing strategies for the delivery of the DPP.   

Elina Mwasinga (Malawi) is dually focused on HIV prevention for pregnant women and lactating mothers and HIV cure research. Thus far, she’s secured commitment from the National AIDS Commission to integrate cure into Malawi’s Technical Working Group on Research to coordinate activities and ensure a robust cure research portfolio. Likewise, Elina secured integrated PrEP-family planning services with specified inclusion of pregnant and lactating mothers, as reflected in the MOH’s EMTCT Accountability Roadmap. And, she presented on the use of broadly neutralizing antibodies (bNAbs) to prevent vertical transmission during a WHO consultation and on advocacy as a panelist speaker at the 2024 International AIDS Conference. 

Pamela Fuzile (South Africa) is focused on boosting youth engagement in prevention and supporting young champions. She’s establishing a national level youth platform for new technologies in nine provinces where members can influence decisions in the HIV and PrEP technical working groups at SANAC. A key objective is youth advocacy for the inclusion of injectable PrEP and the dapivirine ring in all public health facilities responsive to the needs of young people.

Congrats to all the Fellows on their impressive work thus far. We’ll report on their total accomplishments in late 2025.

AVAC’s Most Downloaded Resources of 2024

From the implementation of DoxyPEP to the game-changing trial results of lenacapavir for PrEP, 2024 has been a landmark year for advancements in HIV and STI prevention. AVAC’s most downloaded resources capture these pivotal milestones, offering essential insights and tools to power your advocacy. Dive into the highlights and stay informed about the strategies shaping the future of HIV prevention.

AVAC’s Top 10

This episode of PxPulse looks at why and how the decisions that shape global health must be made by those facing the greatest risks. As the world evaluates the pandemic response and debates on decolonizing global health gain momentum, equity in global health has never been more urgent.

This graphic shows currently available options for HIV prevention, newly approved and recommended treatment, and those in development.

This plan provides a broad view of all the moving parts and identifies actions and actors responsible for ensuring time is not wasted and opportunity not squandered.

This PxPulse podcast episode goes deep on LEN for PrEP. Recorded just days before Gilead’s announcement that PURPOSE 2 also found very high efficacy, Dr. Flavia Kiweewa, a principal investigator of the first trial to announce efficacy, lays out the research findings and what they mean. And Chilufya Kasanda Hampongo of Zambia’s Treatment Advocacy and Literacy Campaign and Mitchell Warren of AVAC talk about how to change a long history of squandered opportunities to get rollout right.

This report examines disbursements by the U.S. NIH and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and is one of few reports to track funding trends in vaccine and diagnostics R&D, and pipeline investments for some of the most common STIs.

Led by AVAC alongside a network of partners, the People’s Research Agenda puts forward recommendations to diversify and strengthen the HIV prevention pipeline, enhance investment and financial support for HIV prevention research and development, and guide an advocacy strategy that truly addresses the needs of communities across the prevention pipeline.

This roadmap aims to build on existing progress while accelerating the pace of HIV prevention. With anticipated regulatory approvals and production scaling, this plan targets over 2.5 million LEN users in low- and middle-income countries by 2027. It focuses on structural barriers and integration of generics into national programs.

Good Participatory Practice Guidelines  have been shaping and improving clinical research since 2007. They provide a global reference guide for ethical and effective stakeholder engagement, helping ensure the priorities of trial participants and their communities are centered in clinical trials and broader research agendas.

DoxyPEP is a post-exposure prophylaxis used to prevent the acquisition of some bacterial STIs after sex. This advocates’ guide addresses questions regarding who will benefit most from DoxyPEP and how to implement this strategy broadly to ensure equitable access.

In 2024, Gilead Sciences released findings from the PURPOSE 1 and PURPOSE 2 trials testing lenacapavir (LEN) as HIV prevention. This advocates’ primer provides background on the product and trials; a summary of the early findings of PURPOSE 1 & 2; key questions and next steps.

Avac Event

CROI 2025

The 32nd annual Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI) will take place from March 9-12 in San Francisco, California. CROI is the go-to forum for groundbreaking science in the HIV field, and this years program will be full of groundbreaking research.

Avac Event

African Workshop on HIV & Women 2025

The inaugural edition of the African Workshop on HIV & Women will take place in hybrid format on 27 – 28 February 2025 in Nairobi, Kenya.

The time zone that will be used for this meeting is East Africa Time (EAT). If you need to convert the times to your timezone, this website might be of interest to you: www.WorldTimeBuddy.com.

This exciting new initiative is a regional workshop paired to the annual “International Workshop on HIV & Women”. It is an outstanding opportunity for both local and international healthcare providers, researchers, government, industry, and community representatives to discuss and further increase their knowledge on the issues related to HIV and women living in Africa.

The primary purpose of this workshop is to support changes that will provide a better quality of life for women living with HIV and reduce HIV transmissions in the region.

The format of the workshop enables attendees to learn from renowned HIV experts, discuss challenges, gaps, and opportunities for further learning and research. The debates and roundtables are an especially important vehicle to discuss issues and challenge dogma.

The workshop also provides a forum for early-career investigators to present their research and to personally meet with experts they view as mentors and inspiration for their work.

The meeting organizers hope this workshop will catalyze forming a community, where attendees continue to participate yearly and form valuable relationships and partnerships that lead to collaborative projects and positive changes.

Introducing the Gears of Lenacapavir Rollout and The People’s Research Agenda

This World AIDS Day, the HIV/AIDS response stands at a crossroads, with injectable lenacapavir set to transform HIV prevention. But as the new UNAIDS report highlights, it also comes at the same time as restrictive policies, economic instability, and geopolitical challenges threaten to frustrate access and rollback so much of the progress that has been achieved over the past two decades. 

AVAC’s 2025 advocacy agenda prioritizes collaboration and strategies for equitable and accelerated product introduction that maximize the public health potential of new prevention options and simultaneously sustains investment in critical research and development. AVAC’s newest publication, The Gears of Lenacapavir for PrEP Rollout, provides a clear pathway for the speed, scale and equity needed to translate exciting science into public health impact, while our recent The People’s Research Agenda (PRA) meets this high-stakes moment for HIV prevention with a clear, concise and collaboratively developed set of priorities for how prevention research should be conducted and what products should be developed in the future. 

Despite the challenges, 2025 holds immense potential for ensuring the equitable rollout of new options and the accelerated development of a pipeline of additional options, the combination of which can help move the field closer to ending HIV/AIDS.  

For the latest information on injectable lenacapavir for PrEP, be sure to join us for our webinar Tuesday, December 3. And read more below about both the Gears of LEN for PrEP Rollout and The People’s Research Agenda. 

The Gears of Lenacapavir for PrEP Rollout: Driving Speed, Scale, and Equity

Lenacapavir’s rollout is not just about making a new drug available as quickly as possible; it is about ensuring that it reaches the people who need it most, as swiftly and equitably as possible. Gilead has announced its readiness to manufacture up to 10 million doses for 2026, but this potential hinges on coordinated action by governments, donors, and civil society. The roadmap outlines the essential gears driving this effort, from robust demand generation and procurement strategies to equitable distribution and community-driven implementation. Crucially, the roadmap emphasizes lessons learned from previous PrEP interventions: that availability alone is not enough. With global HIV targets still unmet and disparities persisting, this effort demands decisive action and long-term planning.

Download the infographic

The People’s Research Agenda: A Community-Driven Vision

The People’s Research Agenda (PRA) brings the voices of affected communities to the forefront of HIV prevention research and product development. With limited resources, the stakes for decisions about which products to develop and eventually deliver become even higher for funders, communities, policy makers and governments. The PRA offers a bold vision for aligning scientific innovation with community needs. By amplifying the perspectives of those most affected by the epidemic, the PRA is a tool for driving accountability among funders, developers, and policymakers. As a living, adaptable framework, it ensures that evolving needs and challenges in the prevention landscape remain at the center of decision-making.

A Call to Action

The rollout of lenacapavir and the implementation of the PRA come at a critical moment in the global HIV/AIDS response. Achieving their full potential will require sustained collaboration, strategic investments, and unwavering commitment to equity. Together, we can transform this pivotal moment into lasting progress.

Advocacy: Now more than ever

We are in a period of profound uncertainty, remarkable progress and tremendous concern—for the state of the world, for the state of global health and HIV, and for the specific work that AVAC and our partners do. We’ve seen incredible advances in biomedical prevention in 2024 with the introduction of the dapivirine vaginal ring (DVR) and injectable cabotegravir (CAB) for PrEP and the spectacular clinical trial results of injectable lenacapavir—the combination of which could transform lives if rolled out with speed, scale and equity.  

For many of us, the unfolding developments in the United States, which continue to ripple across the global health community, are sparking anxiety around whether we can sustain the progress the field has made over decades while continuing to develop effective HIV prevention options and ensure access to those options for everyone who needs and wants them.  

At AVAC, we see strength in staying focused on developing what we need and delivering what we have. We are doubling down on delivering high-quality, impactful work, supported by ongoing collaboration with our partners to meet our mission in a shifting environment.

Your help is instrumental to the success of this work. If you appreciate our insights, resources, infographics, coalition-building, and evidence- and rights-based advocacy, please consider making a contribution to ensure that this work can continue.

As we recognize World AIDS Day this weekend and next week’s #GivingTuesday, a global day dedicated to giving back, we ask you to consider supporting AVAC so that we and our partners can continue to deliver the effective and impactful advocacy that is needed now more than ever. This means continuing to put people and communities at the center of our work, ensuring that the global response is connected to the real needs of affected people.

Many thanks in advance for your partnership and support.

PxPulse: The Votes are In — What’s next for the US’ role in global health and HIV prevention

KFF’s Jen Kates and AVAC’s Suraj Madoori lay out the challenges and the priorities in 2025 and beyond. 

In the days, months and years ahead under a new US Presidential Administration, advocacy for choice, freedom, science, and rights will require intentional strategies to protect hard fought gains in HIV treatment and prevention and in global health generally, and to safeguard policies and programs that advance it. And there will be major implications for the global AIDS response.

Navigating through the work ahead involves assessing the potential impact on PEPFAR and Global Fund support; on USAID, NIH, CDC and the FDA; on the US relationship to WHO and other UN agencies; and on evidence- and rights-based policies and programs generally. Joining us to begin those efforts and better understand the landscape for advocacy are Jen Kates from KFF and our own Suraj Madoori.

Listen

Resources

Today — in the US and around the world

There are no words that can adequately, or appropriately, describe the state of the world right now and how AVAC and I are feeling about it. I expect it is a similar sentiment for all of us — irrespective of where we live and vote. 

AVAC was founded 30 years ago — in a very different time, with very different political and economic dynamics and epidemiologic realities. But from that beginning, AVAC has always championed an evidence- and rights-based, equitable response to the HIV epidemic — honoring choice and dignity for all.  

And we will not stop — not until we are done, and most definitely not now! 

We will all need time to process these US election results and strategize how we navigate through them in the days and years ahead — as individuals, as a network of partners, as citizens of the world, and — most importantly — as advocates for choice, freedom, science, and rights.  

There will, undoubtedly, be major implications for global health and the global AIDS response. We look forward to working with our partners in protecting hard-fought gains and in assessing the potential impact on PEPFAR and Global Fund support; on USAID, NIH, CDC and the FDA; on the US relationship to WHO and other UN agencies; and on evidence- and rights-based policies and programs generally.  

We will be in touch soon with an initial analysis, starting with the release of a podcast next week with Jen Kates from KFF and our own Suraj Madoori as we begin to unpack it all. And we look forward to working with all of you in reviewing it and making it actionable. 

Thank you; stay tuned; and stay strong. 

Mitchell J. Warren
Executive Director
AVAC

Avac Event

True Choice in HIV Prevention Involves More than Product Options: Novel strategies in service delivery

The Choice Agenda and presenters from Brazil, Kenya, and South Africa discussed novel strategies for the delivery of HIV prevention interventions. All HIV prevention products have their “Achilles Heels.” Differentiated service delivery supports reaching a wide range of potential users and can overcome challenges with product attributes. Offering different strategies can also make the interface with health care easier and more community friendly.

Speakers:

  • Ines Dourado, Universidade Federal da Bahia
  • Catherine Verde Hashim, AVAC
  • Catherine Martin, Wits RHI
  • Katrina Ortblad, Fred Hutch
  • Adriano Queiroz, City of São Paulo Municipal Health Secretariat
  • Daniel Were, Jhpiego

Thanks to WHO for providing live simultaneous Ukrainian translation and to PAHO for providing live simultaneous translation in Portuguese and Spanish.

Video Recording and English Audio / Ukrainian Audio / Portuguese Audio / Spanish Audio / Slides / Resources

HIVR4P Highlights, Inclusive Prevention Pipeline, Policy Shaping & More

AVAC’s round-up of resources, updates and insights this week includes highlights from HIVR4P, a new vision for an inclusive prevention pipeline, shaping policy and more!

HIVR4P 2024 conference highlights and recap

The 5th HIV Research for Prevention (R4P) conference was held last week in Lima, Peru. The data and discussions centered on accomplishments in HIV prevention, how far the field remains from reaching targets, understanding how choice works and why it matters, and where the research agenda is headed. As AVAC’s Mitchell Warren told Axios, “lenacapavir is on everybody’s lips here at HIVR4P 2024. That’s probably the second-most popular word this week; I think the most popular word is access.

Read more.

Partners and AVAC launched The People’s Research Agenda (PRA), a global initiative driven by communities and advocates to envision an inclusive HIV prevention pipeline and ensure the voices of those most affected by HIV are integrated into HIV prevention research and development. 

Read the report.

Media Highlights

Shaping policy, centering people

AVAC’s Suraj Madoori Joins Developed Country NGO Delegation (DelDev)

Policy Director, Suraj Madoori is one of four new members to join DevDel, one of the 20 voting delegations to the Board of the Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. DevDel plays a critical role in the development and evolution of organizational strategy, the funding model, the work of the Secretariat and policy. 

Read more.

AVAC’s Jessica Salzwedel Talks Community Engagement with National Co-ordinating Centre for Public Engagement

In a mini series on community engagement, the National Co-ordinating Centre for Public Engagement interviewed AVAC’s Jessica Salzwedel, Senior Program Manager of Research Engagement on what centering communities truly means.

Listen now.