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Happy New Year! We hope that you started your year refreshed for important work ahead–and to help get you started, we’ve rounded up a few select resources from AVAC.org that we hope you’ll consider as you set your agenda for 2019. We think these cross-cutting and thought-provoking tools help to frame the most pressing issues facing HIV prevention in the year ahead.
Px Wire: 10 questions for 2019
The final Px Wire of 2018 lays out 10 questions on issues confronting the HIV prevention field. We raise questions and offer brief analysis of: NIH funding and the future of research on user-initiated prevention options; anticipated results from the ECHO and DISCOVER trials; how programs and policies for rolling out oral PrEP—and possibly the dapivirine vaginal ring—need to evolve; how condom programming should be prioritized, and so much more. The centerspread features an infographic linking the timeline of prevention research with the pace that’s needed for implementation.
Next-Generation Trial Design
Has HIV prevention research seen its last placebo-controlled efficacy trial? As trials become increasingly complex, researchers are exploring how to continue to successfully study new strategies. AVAC has two new resources to help you understand the issue and the implications for advocacy and stakeholder engagement.
- Our P-Values blog post, Sharpening the Blunt GPP Instrument: A call for focused stakeholder engagement in designing the efficacy trials of the future, offers a concise treatment of why trials are changing and the challenges and opportunities for advocates.
- The latest episode of our Px Pulse podcast deepens the conversation with three terrific advocates discussing what’s at stake and how to prepare.
amfAR’s new database on PEPFAR
The PEPFAR Monitoring, Evaluation and Reporting (MER) Database, is a new web tool created as part of the COMPASS Africa collaboration. It gives HIV advocates access to a wide range of PEPFAR program data, such as district-level data with descriptions of what each indicator means, how the results are measured, and how the data can be interpreted. These data are presented in a variety of formats including data visualization, maps and downloadable PDFs.
Special Supplement on GPP
In October, the Journal of the International AIDS Society published a special supplement, Science, Theory and Practice of Engaged Research: Good Participatory Practice and beyond. It documents good participatory practices and explores their value to stakeholder engagement at clinical trials across research areas, geographies and populations. You might also like how one of the authors of the JIAS supplement laid out the issues in this piece, cross-posted on AVAC’s blog, P-Values.
Women Need Effective Choices: Do research dollars reflect this priority?
A growing number of voices are recognizing the importance of choice in HIV prevention – including a year-beginning statement from Maureen Goodenow, the Director of the Office of AIDS Research at the National Institutes of Health. The need for better choices is especially imperative for women who carry a disproportionate burden of HIV risk compared to men. The Resource Tracking for HIV Prevention R&D Working Group’s annual report looks closely at investment trends and features an infographic depicting the status of 2017 investment in research investigating PrEP for women.
Young Women Demand Inclusion
The best way to understand the diverse needs of those who face a risk of HIV is to listen to the people themselves. At the HIV Research for Prevention conference in Madrid in October, a group from the Young Women’s Leadership Initiative organized a protest to demand their inclusion in the process of planning for research. Read their statement, get inspired and heed the call in your work in 2019!