Avac Event

Webinar: Understanding—And Improving—COVID-19 Vaccine Uptake

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In collaboration with the COVID Advocates Advisory Board (CAAB) and the Coalition to Accelerate and Support Prevention Research (CASPR), this webinar, moderated by WACI Health’s Rosemary Mburu, looked closely at how global health leaders are tackling public resistance to COVID-19 vaccines, and lessons for the HIV field.

Speakers included: John Nkengasong, current director of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention; Heidi Larson, founding director of the Vaccine Confidence Project at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine; and Kate Hopkins, Director of Research, Vaccine Acceptance & Demand at the Sabin Vaccine Institute.

View the recording / Read the summary

Avac Event

Webinar: Oral PrEP Implementation and Implications for Next Generation PrEP

This webinar discussed insights from oral PrEP programs and how these experiences can inform faster, smarter and more affordable rollout of next-generation HIV prevention products. It featured:

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  • AVAC’s Jessica Rodrigues opened the meeting with background on PrEP uptake globally and regionally, noting that due to rapid scale-up, approximately 69 percent of cumulative PrEP initiations have now occurred in Sub-Saharan Africa. (View the slides.)
  • Saiqa Mullick of Wits RHI shared lessons from South Africa’s experience scaling up oral PrEP from 2016, when PrEP was offered only to sex workers at a handful of clinics, to 2021, with PrEP broadly available in more than 2,000 public health facilities. (View slides.)
  • Daniel Were of Jhpiego described the Jilinde Project’s successful efforts to increase demand and dismantle stigma surrounding PrEP. (View slides.)
  • Joseph Murungu of Pangaea Zimbabwe AIDS Trust (PZAT) shared a dynamic, client-centered approach to ensure that PrEP programs respond to the needs of young people. (View slides.)

Watch the recording / Read the summary

Avac Event

Are We PrEPared this Time? Ensuring a Swift Translation of Research into Community Impact

First approved in 2012, roll out of oral PrEP has been slow, uneven, and marked by troubling and unacceptable uptake disparities across race/ethnicity, gender and geography. In 2019, less than 25 percent of people eligible for PrEP in the US received a prescription. Late last year, the US FDA approved a new PrEP agent called Apretude, an injectable, longer-acting PrEP option. While hopes are high for this intervention, it is replete with challenges from both the user as well as the delivery sides of the equation.

The AIDS Foundation Chicago, AVAC and an array of speakers spoke on what must happen to ensure swift translation of positive research results into community impact. What follows are a set of resources from the webinar.

Resources

Recording / Slides

Sign On Letter
Requesting that the Biden administration include in his upcoming budget request $400 million to create a National PrEP Grant Program. Organizations can sign here.

Resources Shared

Avac Event

AIDS 2022

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The world’s largest conference on HIV/AIDS, AIDS 2022, convened from July 27-August 2 in Montreal, Canada. Hosted by the International AIDS Society, this was 24th session of the conference and the first since the pandemic to offer in-person and virtual access.

AIDS 2022 launched at a pivotal moment in HIV prevention. The ability to deliver two new proven PrEP methods will determine conversations and decisions happening now. These decisions will impact policies and funding for products in the pipeline and programs to deliver what’s available today for HIV prevention. It’s time to sharpen the agenda for HIV prevention and global health equity. AIDS 2022 offered opportunities to engage in these conversations while getting up to date on the latest research, rollout, policy and advocacy.

Below AVAC find resources related to the conference overall and find key sessions on prevention.

For a full roundup from Montreal, read our blog post.

Resources

Posters

Panels, Satellites, Sessions and Workshops Featuring AVAC and Partners

Friday, July 29

  • [Satellite] Next Generation PrEP: Science, policy, and community impact
    18:15-19:45 EDT

    How do clinical trials assess efficacy of new and still-needed experimental products, with highly effective options available to the public? This session explores the need to bring key stakeholders including communities, industry and regulators to questions such as: How do regulators approach groundbreaking new trial designs in HIV prevention? How do these trial designs affect patients in the trials and those that may benefit from candidate drugs?

Saturday, July 30

  • [Symposium] Equitable roll out of health products: What will it take?
    14:15-15:15 EDT

    Discussing innovative strategies, collaborative partnerships and transparent processes that engage advocates, government agencies, policy makers, government and non-governmental funders, regulatory bodies and pharmaceutical companies and result in equitable access to new products, the key to achieving rapid and effective product rollout.

Sunday, July 31

flyer for our next shot workshop

flyer for demand, delivery and data for decision-making meeting

Monday, August 1

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Avac Event

2020 United States Conference on HIV/AIDS

Due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the 2020 United States Conference on HIV/AIDS (USCHA) will take place online Oct. 19-21, 2020. Registration is free for the first 4,000 community/non-profit registrants. And all content will be available online for free after the conference. The Virtual 2020 USCHA will have five plenaries, 60 workshops, 12 institutes, and an Exhibit Hall. New this year will be a Jobs Fair. The new federal resources for the Ending the HIV Epidemic plan means thousands of new jobs. USCHA wants to bring together the people who need jobs with the organizations who receive the new EHE funding. We also want to make sure that the people who get these jobs represent the communities hit hardest by HIV.

Avac Event

Understanding the EMA Opinion: Next Steps for Dapivirine Vaginal Ring

On July 29, AVAC held a webinar Understanding the EMA Opinion: Next Steps for Dapivirine Vaginal Ring for advocates to learn about next steps on the regulatory process and implications for rollout from advocates, International Partnership for Microbicides (IPM) and the WHO. We were joined by Zeda Rosenberg, CEO of IPM, Rachel Baggaley from the WHO, Cleopatra Makura, 2019 AVAC Fellow, and Ruth Nahurira, a trial participant.

Recording and Slides: YouTube / Zeda Rosenberg’s Slides

Avac Event

Emergency Global HIV Activist Call

Right now, COVID-19 is wreaking havoc on access to HIV treatment and prevention across the continent. In a matter of days, African countries will reach a grim milestone: the number of COVID-19 cases will surge past 1 million. Many clinics where adults and children get lifesaving HIV treatment have simply shuttered. Medicine supply chains have been disrupted, resulting in life-threatening shortages of drugs.

Activism is needed now to help ensure people living with HIV, tuberculosis and malaria in the world’s poorest countries do not face even greater suffering and death from the dual pandemics of COVID-19 and HIV. Join Health Gap‘s emergency activist organizing call on Tuesday, August 4th at 6PM EST.

Right now, Congress is negotiating an emergency COVID-19 spending package. We need to pressure them to fully fund an emergency response that will mitigate harm from COVID-19 to countries facing the highest burdens of HIV, tuberculosis and malaria.

Time is running out. in less than 7 days, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria will run out of money in its COVID-19 Emergency Response Mechanism, a program established to help countries respond to COVID-19 with testing, case finding and treatment while continuing to scale up AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria programs. And the US bilateral AIDS program, PEPFAR, is reporting destabilization of their treatment and prevention programs.

In order to stop millions of preventable deaths and avoid massive suffering from COVID-19 as well as HIV, tuberculosis and malaria, we need to demand $4 billion for The Global Fund and $1.4 billion for PEPFAR in the COVID-19 emergency supplemental bill before Congress now.

Sign up for Health Gap’s emergency organizing call today.

Avac Event

Learning from Historic Vaccine Research & the Latest on the mRNA-1273 Candidate

On Tuesday, August 25, AVAC held a webinar presentation and discussion with Dr. Barney Graham, the Deputy Director of the NIH’s Vaccine Research Center (VRC). Dr. Graham reviewed the rapid development timeline for COVID-19 vaccines and explored some of the recent and historic vaccine research developments that are being applied to this challenge. He also provided a specific update on the mRNA-1273 vaccine—a vaccine developed by Moderna and the NIH—which is undergoing testing in a Phase III clinical trial launched last month.

Recording and Slides: YouTube / Dr. Graham’s Slides

Avac Event

How COVID-19 is Impacting Africa: A Conversation with the Directors of Africa CDC and WACI Health

On Wednesday, September 16, WACI Health, AVAC, and Friends of the Global Fight Against AIDS, TB and Malaria hosted a virtual dialogue about the impact of COVID-19 in Africa. Panelists included Dr. John Nkengasong, Director of the Africa Centres for Disease Control, Rosemary Mburu, Executive Director of WACI Health and Lwazi Mlaba, a Global Fund Champion working in HIV, TB and GBV; a COVID-survivor and the founder of the an African COVID-19 Support group. Dr. Elizabeth Bukusi, Principal Research Officer at KEMRI and Co-Director of the KEMRI-UCSF Infectious Disease Research Training Program and AVAC’s Maureen Luba moderated the converstation. The conversation explored:

  • The status of COVID-19 in Africa and its impact on AIDS, TB and malaria programming.
  • The role of African researchers in the development of COVID-19 therapeutics and vaccines.
  • The role of global donors to support an Africa-led COVID-19 response.

Watch the recording of the conversation here.

Avac Event

Advocates’ Strategy Call to Prepare for the October 22 US FDA Vaccine Advisory Committee Meeting

With multiple COVID vaccine candidates in late-stage trials, the growing politicization of the process, and, especially the growing concerns and mistrust, now is a particularly important time to engage in the regulatory process. Detailed guidance for COVID vaccine developers, issued by US FDA in June, provides a roadmap for advocates to monitor and evaluate the vaccine approval process, and AVAC recently put out this primer on the process, highlighting the upcoming VRBPAC meeting on October 22.

Please join AVAC and TAG on Wednesday, Sept 30th at 5pm ET for a strategy call to prepare for the October 22 FDA Vaccine Advisory Committee meeting. Access the call here.

We’ll be joined by Josh Sharfstein – now at Johns Hopkins and a former Principal Deputy Commissioner of the FDA – who will walk is through the FDA process, engage in discussion about how best to engage with the VRBPAC process, and provide thoughts on what we all might prioritize and highlight. Written submissions to the FDA are due on Oct 15 and requests to present at the meeting are due on Oct 7.