This webinar kicked off our year-long dialogue about prevention research and advocacy, Research & Reality. We’ve designed the series to provide information and debate about key topics. Some of these are clear priorities, while others will undoubtedly emerge as data and country-level progress take us in new directions.

This webinar gave an idea of the issues we’re tracking in 2014 and discussed our advocacy timeline.

For more information on the series, AVAC’s 2014 advocacy timeline, links to register for upcoming webinars and archives of past calls, please visit www.avac.org/advocacy2014.

Click here to view the full Flash animation of the webinar.

In this call we learned about and discussed proposed research to directly evaluate how different family planning methods might impact HIV risk.

Trial designs are actively being discussed and funding is being sought for such research—but there are many questions where advocates’ voices are needed: What should a trial look like? How can method mix (the range of available family planning options) be expanded for all women? What can be done to better integrate HIV and family planning in the meantime?

View the full webinar here.

The Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI) is a scientifically focused meeting of the world’s leading researchers working to understand, prevent, and treat HIV/AIDS and its complications.

The goal of CROI is to provide a forum for translating laboratory and clinical research into progress against the AIDS epidemic. Over 4,000 leading researchers and clinicians from around the world convene in a different location each year for the Conference. 

USCA is the largest AIDS-related gathering in the US, bringing together thousands of workers from all fronts of the HIV/AIDS epidemic to build national support networks and exchange the latest information. In 2014, USCA “will continue to highlight how the Affordable Care Act can help us draw even closer to ending the epidemic, while focusing on the challenges we still have to overcome to achieve this vision.”

Cape Town International Convention Centre in Cape Town, South Africa

The HIV Research for Prevention (R4P) conference is the first global conference to cover all forms of biomedical HIV prevention, including AIDS vaccines, microbicides, PrEP, treatment as prevention and other approaches. 

The conference concluded on Friday, October 31 but session webcasts and conference reports are available below as are links to slides and the recording of AVAC’s post-R4P webinar—The State of the HIV Prevention Union: The Road from R4P.

AVAC’s Daily Snapshot 

Each day, AVAC offered up a selective, whirlwind tour through the day’s sessions—check them out below:

• Day One, Tuesday 28 October 
• Day Two, Wednesday, 29 October
• Day Three, Thursday, 30 October
• Day Four, Friday, 31 October
• The State of HIV Prevention Union: The road from R4P webinar, Thursday, 6 November

Webcasts

The conference has made all of the oral presentations, including the opening and closing sessions, available as webcasts. Download them here.

Blog and Social Media

WhatsUpHIV is a live blog set up to report developments from HIV R4P. Over 50 entries were published from advocates, community journalists and researchers.

Visit the social media archive of the conference on Twitter and Facebook via #HIVR4P.

Media Clips

Ken Mayer has a great summary of the conference in the Lancet.

Download a comprehensive 107-page document of media clippings.

The CBC has dispatches from the conference including news about RV144 and next steps, the growing responsibility of African countries in fighting HIV/AIDS and the advantages of a microbicide gel and vaginal ring for women in preventing HIV

Channel Africa interviewed Sharon Hillier, Jim Kublin and Mitchell Warren.

South Africa’s Mail & Guardian published a supplement on the R4P conference.

Conference Posters

All conference posters are available here. AVAC posters from R4P are available to download below.

• The Tipping Point: Moving from rhetoric to real milestones for ending AIDS
• Tracking Investments and Expenditures in HIV Prevention Research and Development: Sustaining funding in a shifting international development landscape
• Increasing National Impact and Uptake of Good Participatory Practice Guidelines for Biomedical HIV Prevention (GPP): Three country case studies
• Innovation in Stakeholder Engagement: Piloting a monitoring and evaluation toolkit
• Resource Tracking to Ensure Accountability and Sustainability: HIV prevention, treatment, diagnostics and cure research investment analysis

This inaugural translational medicine conference: What Will it Take to Achieve an AIDS-Free World?, which will bring the audiences and editors of The Lancet and Cell together to bridge the gap between clinicians and researchers focused on understanding, managing, preventing and curing HIV/AIDS.

The ambition is to host a meeting every year that will address the most pressing topics in translational medicine. The 2013 inaugural conference will offer:

• A combination of contributions from basic researchers, physicians, policy leaders and industry scientists working on HIV/AIDS
• World-renowned speakers with a broad range of expertise across the interlocking fields of HIV research and clinical practice
• Opportunities for knowledge exchange and synergy to accelerate progress in addressing the disease

The desire to reach out and connect across disciplines can be hampered by lack of a common language. At the conference the editors of Cell and The Lancet will curate sessions that are designed to capture the energy at the interface between basic researchers and physicians that we hope will start new conversations that will catalyze the development of new translational approaches and solutions.