This webinar will officially launch the newly released PLOS One Collection, “Voluntary Medical Male Circumcision (VMMC) for HIV Prevention: New Mathematical Models for Prioritizing Sub-Populations by Age & Geography.”

In the first half of the webinar, presenters will discuss new findings from mathematical models featured in the collection that relate to the potential effects of targeting sub-populations for voluntary medical male circumcision services. The second half of the webinar will feature panelists who will discuss how the models have been used to inform their choices about where best to invest their resources to prevent HIV.

The annual Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI) took place February 13–16, 2017 in Seattle, Washington. Read on to review the coverage, access webcasts of conference sessions and to check out what caught AVAC’s attention.

In the Media

CROI 2017 was covered extensively by Medscape and aidsmap, and on AVAC’s feed on #CROI2017.

Highlighted Webcasts

Whether from the conference rooms in Seattle or while streaming remotely, the following sessions caught our attention.

Monday, February 13

• Workshop for New Investigators and Trainees
• Clinical Trial Design and Analysis
• Martin Delaney Presentation: CROI’s yearly presentation, in honor of the late HIV activist, Martin Delaney, focused on the Good Participatory Practice guidelines (GPP). Through presentations and participant feedback, this panel provided global highlights of GPP and discussed their significance in the research process

Tuesday, February 14

• The Emerging Potential for HIV Cure for Infants, Children and Adults
• Hiding in Plain Sight: Discovering The Undiagnosed and Undertreated HIV Epidemic
• PrEP Without Borders: New Delivery Options
• Strangers in the Night: Challenges and Opportunities in STI Control

Wednesday, February 15

• Antiviral Vaccine Development from A (AIDS) to Z (Zika)
• Common Bedfellows: PrEP, STIs, and the Microbiome
• HIV Self-testing: Know Yourself
• Getting to the Third 90

Thursday, February 16

• If You Can Make It There: Ending the HIV Epidemic in New York
• The Impossible Dream: Population Perspective on 90:90:90 in Adolescents and Young Adults
• Hot Flashes: Hormonal Contraception and HIV Risk
• How Does the Microbiome Affect HIV Infection?
• Paths Intertwined: Broadly Neutralizing Antibodies and the HIV-1 Envelope Trimer

Additional Resources

• All Webcasts
• Poster Presentations
• The Abstract Book: A complete collection of all the abstracts presented at CROI 2017

The National HIV PrEP Summit (NHPS) is a new NMAC conference slated for December 3-4, 2016 in San Francisco. Like the conference’s logo, this meeting is a collaboration between community-based organizations (CBOs), health departments (HDs), national organizations and NMAC. The meeting brings together HIV leaders to discuss and learn about pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) and other biomedical HIV prevention interventions.

The intent of NHPS is not to argue the science of PrEP. Instead, it will focus on the implementation and infrastructure needed to turn the promise of the science into an effective community-level HIV prevention option.

Every year World AIDS Day events take place across the globe to raise awareness and show support for people living with HIV. To find a local event, or add your own, visit worldaidsday.org.

UNAIDS has campaign materials, social media tools and other information on how to participate all available here.

NAESM 2017 will provide:

• An opportunity to present research and community-defined evidence practices that demonstrate promising outcomes in achieving the goals of the National HIV/AIDS Strategy.
• A venue for the new generation of HIV public health professionals to collaborate, innovate and help shape the future of African-American MSM/YMSM public health matters.
• A venue to present, discusses and examine social determinants of health in the context spirituality, religiosity, and faith through the perspectives of black gay men.
• An inclusive networking and knowledge exchange forum at the national level to identify, discuss and troubleshoot the intersection of health equity, social justice across a range of disciplines and sectors that define the experiences of black gay men.

This World AIDS Day, five leaders in the fight against AIDS presented on what it will take to defeat HIV/AIDS in our lifetime. Mo Rocca, correspondent for CBS News Sunday Morning, moderated a panel discussion probing the latest advances in prevention, the coming battles in advocacy, and the challenges that we can overcome by working together.

The Rockefeller University invited people to learn about promising new approaches to treat and prevent HIV. Attendees heard about ongoing research with broadly neutralizing antibodies, components of the body’s immune system that can be harnessed to attack HIV, and perspectives from scientists, doctors, HIV advocates and volunteers in clinical trials about their experiences with HIV research.