Px Pulse

The upending of US policy by the new presidential administration has collapsed the foundation for global health and the HIV response at every level, from research to program delivery.  It's been a desperate scramble for everyone who cares the lives and wellbeing of those impacted by HIV. Wading into the chaos, all over the world are advocates who began organizing within days, even minutes—as soon as the US government federal executive orders started coming down.   Positive change depends on fierce and effective community leadership, and pressuring powerbrokers to do the right thing.)  Two veteran global health leaders from civil society talk about how civil society is responding. Amanda Banda is Strategic Advisor to the COMPASS Coalition and Asia Russell is Executive Director of Health Gap, and both are members of CHANGE, a coalition with more than 1,500 people, from organizations in nearly every continent, working in coordination to defend global health and the HIV response. https://avac.org/resource/critical-advocacy/ Key Resources Join weekly CHANGE calls, every Thursday 9 AM Washington DC | 4 PM Nairobi to get involved, send us an email for the link to join: contact.change.2025@gmail.com CHANGE resources to fight back against US government HIV and global health cuts and funding freezes, visit pepfarwatch.org/pepfar-funding-freeze Research Matters – Resources to Protect Research Funding  PxWire: May 2025 Despite USG Global Health Collapse, Here Are Several Data Trackers To Support Your Advocacy 

On February 10, AVAC and the Journalism Development Network came forward with Public Citizen to sue the new US presidential administration, seeking emergency relief from the funding freeze on all foreign assistance. We know the impact of the withdrawal of funds has been devastating. AVAC's lawsuit is one of several efforts to fight back in the courts. AVAC's Executive Director, Mitchell Warren and Public Citizen Litigator, Lauren Bateman explain these lawsuits and why they matter. For resources and other background go to https://avac.org/resource/lawsuit-wins-and-whats-at-stake/

Community-Led Monitoring has been on the rise in the HIV response. Known as CLM for short, it's a tactic being championed and implemented to ensure that communities play a direct role in monitoring and improving HIV services. This episode of PxPulse: The Advocacy Chronicles puts a spotlight on CLM in Malawi, where civil society and communities are successfully using CLM to connect government decision makers to gaps in HIV services and to what people really need. Thanks to persistent advocacy, both PEPFAR and Global Fund now recognize, through their funding, the critical role of CLM. David Kamkwamba, a journalist and health advocate and the former chair of the Civil Society Advocacy Forum on HIV and related diseases (CSAF),  tells us what advocates have accomplished in Malawi and just how they did it. CSAF and AVAC are partners in the Coalition to Build Momentum, Power, Activism, Strategy & Solidarity (COMPASS) which has supported extensive work on community-led monitoring in Malawi and across the region.

In this episode of PxPulse:The Advocacy Chonicles, Atuswege Mwangomale goes deep on the advocacy work behind the passage of Tanzania's Universal Healthcare Law. Atu serves as Head of Health Programs for Sikika, a Tanzania-based advocacy organization with a long track record of promoting best practices in governmental financing in the health sector, and advocating for improved health outcomes. Sikika, along with AVAC, is also a member of the COMPASS coalition, which uses data and coalitions across Africa to identify strategic campaigns to advance the HIV response.  Sikika's advocacy has been crucial to the ultimate passage of Tanzania's Universal Health Insurance Bill in 2023, but full funding must still be secured for the law to achieve full impact.   Atu explains the promise of UHC in Tanzania, how Sikika won the trust of government allies, and why working in coalition was essential to success.

In the days and years ahead under a Trump Administration, advocacy for choice, freedom, science, and rights will require deep strategic shifts to protect hard-fought gains in global health generally, and to safeguard policies and programs that advance it. And there will be major implications for the global AIDS response. Joining us to navigate all this and to better understand the landscape for advocacy are Jen Kates from KFF, a nonpartisan health policy research organization, and our own Suraj Madoori.     

In this episode of the Advocacy Chronicles, we put the spotlight on the US, on the dismal statistics on access to PrEP in Black communities, on the state of HIV prevention among Black Americans overall, and the work of one advocacy group—PrEP in Black America (PIBA). Danielle Campbell is one of the founders of PIBA and a long-time advocate for HIV prevention and health equity. She joins the Advocacy Chronicles to talk about PIBA's call to action for an HIV research agenda that prioritizes the needs of Black communities.

The promise of long-acting PrEP has been super-charged this year by studies showing the powerful efficacy of an antiretroviral known as lenacapavir (LEN).  This episode of PxPulse 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 PURPOSE 1, 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.  The PURPOSE1 trials announced findings in June that a twice-yearly injection of LEN was 100% effective among cisgender women, with zero new cases of HIV. And the PURPOSE 2 trial among cisgender men, and trans and non-binary people, was shown to reduce the risk of HIV by 96%.  LEN now enters a select category, one of five ARV-based options for PrEP that all protect against HIV if you take them.  But many of the people applauding the results from PURPOSE 1 and 2 will tell you that breakthrough science like this is, as hard as it is, is still the easy part. To break the back of the HIV epidemic demands overcoming an altogether different challenge—coordinating and accelerating every step in rolling out new products so that everyone who needs HIV prevention can get it.    Listen to this podcast to learn what must be done to finally deliver on the promise of highly effective HIV prevention, from pills to rings to injectable PrEP and beyond.   Resources  Second Pivotal Trial of Twice-Yearly HIV Prevention Injection Safe and Highly Effective: PURPOSE 2 Trial Among Gay Men, Trans and Nonbinary People, AVAC Press Release  The Lens on LEN: The basics on injectable lenacapavir as PrEP, AVAC  Country planning matrix, PrEPWatch  Moving a Product to the Real World, AVAC  The long wait for long-acting HIV prevention and treatment formulations, Lancet  A game-changer for PrEP if access is adequate, Lancet  Allocation of Non-Commercial CAB for PrEP Supply in Low- and Middle-Income Countries, 2023-2025, AVAC  Generic Cabotegravir Timelines, AVAC  UNAIDS Exec Summary, UNAIDS  Lenacapavir: What it would it take to get the 6-monthly anti-HIV jab to SA, Bhekisisa 

On this episode of PxPulse:The Advocacy Chronicles, Mandisa Tyadi Dukashe, Treatment Technical Lead at the South African National AIDS Council (SANAC) describes her work in helping to inspire and launch a National U=U Campaign in South Africa in 2024.  

On this episode of the Advocacy Chronicles:  A look at advocacy in Uganda for the Dual Prevention Pill (DPP), a new product combining oral PrEP and oral contraception. Ruth Akulu is a member of the DPP Civil Society Advisory Group, part of the Uganda Country Coordinating Mechanism Board for Global Fund,  and a 2022 AVAC Advocacy Fellow. Akulu talks about her work to mobilize regulatory authorities to prepare for the DPP. And while she was at it, the establishment of a groundbreaking new initiative, the Product Regulator's Engagement Committee, which is supporting ongoing engagement between government regulators and young women representing their communities.  To support your advocacy for the DPP and other multipurpose prevention technologies check out AVAC's Advocates' Guide on MPTs  https://avac.org/resource/advocates-guide-to-multipurpose-prevention-technologies-mpts/ ]

In this episode,  Nsubuga Allan Mwasa a Ugandan activist, a clinical psychologist,  and a representative of Sexual Minorities Uganda, or SMUG, an organization that has been at the forefront of the fight for LGBTQ rights, talks about how advocates are organizing to survive and challenge Uganda's Anti-Homosexuality Act (AHA), passed one year ago.  A donation to SMUG supports the work of the Strategic Response Team documenting civil rights violations and intensifying persecution of LGBTQI+ Ugandans. Funds have reached a critical low,  click here to donate to SMUG.    SMUG is part of Convening For Equality CFE, a coalition of civil society groups dedicated to challenging Uganda's AHA and other legislation that discriminates against LGBTQI+ individuals. The law has significantly increased discrimination and violence against the LGBTQI+ community, despite widespread international condemnation and ongoing legal challenges. A new report by the CFE's Strategic Response Team (SRT), UNWANTED, OUTLAWED AND ILLEGAL: THE CRY OF LGBTIQ+ UGANDANS, documents evictions, arrests, imprisonment, forced anal examaminations, and community violence against LGBTQ+ people since the passage of AHA.  

It's considered one of the most important and most difficult scientific enterprises in the history of modern medicine—the hunt for an HIV vaccine.  It has led to vast knowledge of HIV and the immune system, and to breakthrough technology. But developing an effective HIV vaccine is still out of reach, while HIV incidence remains high in hard-hit places in the world. In this episode, Nina Russell of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation talks about where she sees promise in the science, the goals for an HIV vaccine, and why it has an essential role to play alongside the scale-up of PrEP. Go to https://avac.org/resource/an-hiv-vaccine/

Our debut episode of the Advocacy Chronicles features Yvette Raphael, the Executive Director of Advocacy for Prevention of HIV and AIDS (APHA) in South Africa, and a leader in the development of The Choice Manifesto, supported from start to finish by CASPR. As co-chair of the African Women Prevention Community Accountability Board (AWPCAB), Yvette and other board members launched the manifesto in Kampala, in September 2023, calling for choice in HIV prevention options for women — such as oral and injectable cabotegravir for PrEP, the dapivirine vaginal ring and the Dual Prevention Pill — and a commitment to expanding access to them. A call heard by UNAIDS Executive Director Winnie Byanyima, who was on hand at the launch to endorse the manifesto.   Yvette, who is also a 2014 AVAC Advocacy Fellow and celebrated as one of South Africa's leading human rights activists, lays out why The Choice Manifesto matters and how advocates are leveraging it. 

In this episode of PxPulse, we talk about 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 conversation features global health leader and critic, Dr. Madhukar Pai. And two members of the transnational coalition COMPASS Africa, Francis Luwole and Barbra Ncube, offer an up-close look at the coalition's pioneering new model for power-sharing. Get more details and resources at https://avac.org/resource/decolonizing-global-health/

People who are pregnant or lactating (PLP) have historically been excluded from research because of concerns for the developing fetus. But this has led to a dearth of data on new interventions against health threats for this population. In the case of HIV, pregnancy raises the risk of acquiring HIV by up to three times, but providers often do not have the data to know whether a new intervention is safe or how it will work for pregnant patients. As a result, PLP and their physicians are left to make difficult decisions around the use of proven HIV prevention products as they await more data specific to pregnancy and lactation.  But change is in the air. Champions for the inclusion of PLP in research are paving the way for a paradigm shift— one that will redefine this population from needing protection from research to being better protected through research. In this episode of Px Pulse, AVAC's Manju Chatani-Gada takes us through conversations with a trial participant who became pregnant, researchers, policy-makers, and donors to understand why this population gets excluded, the impact it has, and what to do about it.

2023 is a big year for PEPFAR. PEPFAR's considered one of the greatest US foreign policy and global development achievements of the century; the program has saved upwards of 25 million lives since it launched in 2003. But PEPFAR is marking its 20th anniversary while fighting for its future. Its authorization expires Sept. 30th. Until a couple of months ago, most expected smooth sailing for a five-year reauthorization of the program, which has enjoyed deep and broad bipartisan support since its founding. Evangelical Christians, staunch conservatives, DC Democrats, progressive HIV activists, and public health leaders have championed PEPFAR year in and year out. But a handful of Republicans, including past PEPFAR allies, are pulling reauthorization into American abortion politics— despite US laws on the books that prohibit PEPFAR dollars from funding abortions. Supporters across the political spectrum, including many Christian conservatives, are now rallying to ensure this uniquely effective program continues.  In this episode, Px Pulse talks to some of the people who put PEPFAR dollars into action, bringing life-saving medicines, prevention and healthcare to people living with HIV, orphans and other vulnerable communities. And we talk to health leaders who explain why PEPFAR's approach represents a gold standard in advancing global health, and what's at stake in this debate.

With several large HIV vaccine trials in the last few years finding no efficacy, the field is in transition. There are diverse ideas in vaccine research, but there's no clear concept that's ready to test in a late-phase trial or move toward product development currently. Researchers are back to testing new ideas in early-phase research. In this episode of our Px Pulse podcast, Dr. Katy Stephenson explores the implications of recent trial results, the big questions driving next-generation vaccine development, and new strategies underway in early-phase research. Katy is a doctor, a researcher, a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, affiliated with Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, and part of the Center for Virology and Vaccine Research.

In March 2023, the Ugandan Parliament moved forward broad-reaching legislation to further criminalize LGBTQIA+ people.  The bill would make it a crime to even identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or queer, with sentences up to life imprisonment. It gives authorities wide powers to crackdown on anyone who does not report on same-sex couples or who promote gay rights, including prohibitions on media coverage. And the law could impose death sentences in some cases, including for the transmission of HIV. Uganda's President Museveni has the power to stop the bill. But so far he is issuing statements for other African countries to follow Uganda down this path. Anti-gay hate laws and actions by authorities are sweeping across the region with recent crackdowns in Ghana, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Zambia. After the news broke from Uganda, AVAC and partners came together for a call with advocates in Uganda. They are fierce and imperiled voices who are readying to fight for LGBTQIA+ people in Uganda, but at AVAC, we know they are fighting for all of us. On the call, advocates dug into the specifics of how these attacks have gained momentum and their ties to US-based religious extremists. And advocates discuss what needs to happen next.

Over the coming months, global leaders will make key decisions about several initiatives to prepare for the next pandemic. What they commit to and how much they will spend, and how well these plans incorporate equity as a principle across all of these initiatives, is in question. Deadlines for civil society to influence these decisions are coming up. There's a Pandemic Fund, a Pandemic Accord, several UN High-Level Meetings, and a Medical Countermeasures, or MCM, platform, which would coordinate country commitments around drugs, vaccines, diagnostics and other equipment for health emergencies.  In our last podcast, we spoke with Chris Collins, President of Friends of the Global Fight Against AIDS, TB and Malaria about all these efforts. He talked about how ultimately these decisions  will build a new architecture for Pandemic Prevention, Preparedness, and Response, or PPPR.  Chris highlighted what the world learned from COVID 19 and from HIV. We were reminded that so many of the successes from 40 years of fighting HIV came directly from community leadership, and a focus on equity.  But it's not clear whether planning for the next pandemic is heeding these lessons. Karrar Karrar, who heads up Health Policy at Save the Children, and Samantha Rick, who leads AVAC's PPPR policy advocacy, have been tracking these efforts closely. They explain exactly what commitments for equity are needed and who needs to hear this advocacy and when.

Health leaders and advocates around the world are in the midst of creating a new architecture to deal with pandemics. This means new structures, systems and financing for pandemic prevention, preparedness and response — PPPR, for short. A lot is being discussed, and a lot more is riding on the decisions. Chris Collins, the CEO and President at Friends of the Global Fight Against AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria and an AVAC co-founder, has been tracking this work. He's warned of the risk of multiple, siloed systems for global health, and was a co-author of the recent PLOS Global Public Health article, Leveraging the HIV response to strengthen pandemic preparedness, which describes many parts of the HIV response that have been, and must continue to be, central to a bolder vision for this new architecture and for global health at large.   In this episode of Px Pulse, Jeanne Baron talks to Chris about what's at stake, which policy-makers get it already, why this year matters so much, and what advocates can do about it. 

With all the talk about new HIV prevention products such as the dapivirine vaginal ring or injectable cabotegravir for PrEP, what's little understood is how to match proven products with programs, policies and the political will that's needed to get these products to the people who need them. PEPFAR Ambassador Dr. John Nkengasong shares his plan for meeting the moment. Also in this episode, seasoned advocates take on what's working and what's missing in programs today, and the expanding role of civil society in global strategies to end AIDS by 2030. 

In this episode, AVAC's Jeanne Baron and co-host immunologist Katharine Kripke of AVENIR Health explore why developing a vaccine for HIV is different from other viruses.  Two vaccine researchers, Caltech's Pamela Bjorkman and IAVI's Vincent Kioi, lend their expertise.  Learn how HIV has evolved like no other virus that exists today to escape detection by the immune system. Learn why the right target on HIV is so hard to reach and how scientists are tackling it all.

 Linda-Gail Bekker from South Africa's Desmond Tutu Health Foundation and Lillian Mworeko from the International Community of Women Living with HIV East Africa (ICWEA) join host Jeanne Baron and AVAC's Executive Director Mitchell Warren to discuss innovative models for scale-up and delivery. Taking the right steps now could mean HIV prevention options fulfill their life-saving, epidemic-ending potential. It will require working faster and more efficiently than ever before. We dive into what lessons the field has learned, what's still off-track, and the steps advocates, policy-makers, drug makers and funders should each take right now to turn efficacious options into effective choices.

Endpoints are a crucial component in every clinical trial but they are not always well understood, and putting them in context is essential for effective advocacy.  This next installment of the Px Pulse series, Research Fundamentals, which explores key scientific concepts, lays out what endpoints are and why they matter. 

The latest episode of Px Pulse goes behind the scenes of the new HBO movie, The Legend of the Underground. The film documents the lives of AVACer Micheal Ighodaro and other LGBTQ Nigerians as they confront enormous risks to ‘live out loud'. 

The latest episode of Px Pulse takes a deep dive into PEPFAR, The President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief. AVAC's former Director of Strategy and Content, Emily Bass, has just published To End a Plague: America's fight to end AIDS in Africa which documents its pioneering successes and its challenges. 

Findings from two trials on antibody-mediated prevention, the AMP Trials, have been generating discussion since the beginning of the year. The results are complex, and the implications for HIV prevention research are unfolding.

Early results from trials testing cabotegravir as a long acting injectable PrEP show it was safe and highly effective against HIV. Listen to learn what must come next for CAB-LA to advance HIV prevention alongside oral PrEP and the Dapivirine Vaginal Ring?

After decades of research and advocacy, the ring is now one step closer to becoming available as a discreet, woman-initiated HIV prevention option. 

Whether it’s condoms, a flu shot, oral PrEP or the dapivirine vaginal ring, proven products fall short of 100 percent protection against disease, and there’s a lot to know about how and why an intervention may offer imperfect but still useful protection. This episode is part of a new series on Px Pulse, Research Fundamentals

In this episode of Px Pulse (https://www.avac.org/px-pulse) , hear unique perspectives on how COVID-19 and HIV are shaping one another.  Mark Feinberg (https://www.iavi.org/about/board-of-directors/mark-feinberg) , CEO of IAVI (https://www.iavi.org/) , and Helen Rees (http://www.wrhi.ac.za/expertise/detail/professor-helen-rees) , Executive Director of the Wits Reproductive Health and HIV Institute (http://www.wrhi.ac.za/) (Wits RHI), speak to COVID-19 vaccine development.  Sinead Delany-Moretlwe (http://www.wrhi.ac.za/expertise/detail/professor-sinead-delany-moretlwe) , Director of Research at Wits RHI, Vincent Basajja of the Uganda Virus Research Institute (https://www.uvri.go.ug/) , Jau Nanyondo (https://www.avac.org/fellow/jauhara-nanyondo) from Uganda’s Makerere University Walter Reed Project (https://www.muwrp.org/) and Philister Adhiambo from the Kenya Medical Research Institute (https://www.kemri.org/) , explain how HIV prevention trials are adapting in the wake of COVID-19. 

AVAC puts a spotlight on HVTN 702 (https://www.avac.org/trial/hvtn-702) . Data show the vaccine tested is safe, but in a major disappointment for the field, vaccinations were stopped early after a scheduled review showed it did not offer protection. In this episode, learn how much there is still be learned from HVTN 702; from data still to be gathered and from strong community engagement. 

With unmet UNAIDS “Fast-Track” targets (https://www.unaids.org/en/resources/909090) for ending the epidemic now a reality, the field faces the sobering truth. We’ve been striving towards the 90-90-90 treatment targets without an equal commitment to primary prevention targets (https://www.avac.org/infographic/unaids-fast-track-targets-plan-and-progress) .    In this episode of Px Pulse, AVAC’s Emily Bass (https://www.avac.org/staff#bass) , lead author of our repot Now What? (https://report.avac.org/) , talks about AVAC’s blueprint for course-correcting: bold leadership, smart target-setting for HIV prevention research and implementation, and multilayered prevention programs that are centered around people. 

A look at what’s different and what’s the same between F/TDF (Truvada) and F/TAF (Descovy), what’s driving innovation in the proposed trial design, why it's so essential for advocates to engage and more.  

Breaking the Cycle of Transmission (https://www.prepwatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/BreakingCycleTransmission_Oct2017.pdf) , a human-centered design (https://www.designforhealth.org/)  (HCD) project, is shedding new light on how to bring HIV prevention to adolescent girls and young women.

The results of the ECHO trial are out. A much-anticipated study has found no difference in risk among three highly effective contraceptives. But the study also found high HIV infection rates among the women in the study in East and Southern Africa- almost 4 percent. What do the researchers, advocates and the WHO think of the results? 

The ECHO trial (Evidence for Contraceptive options in HIV Outcomes (http://echo-consortium.com/) ) looked at three highly effective contraceptive methods to determine if one carried a higher risk of acquiring HIV compared to the others. Mixed data from previous observational studies had raised questions about one particularly popular method, known as DMPA-IM. (https://www.avac.org/hc/basics) The results of ECHO are due out in June, with stakeholders from both the field of HIV and sexual and reproductive health watching closely. In this episode of Px Pulse, AVAC spoke with two leaders from the ECHO trial team, Dr. Jared Baeten (https://mtnstopshiv.org/news/bios/jared-m-baeten-md-phd) and Dr. Helen Rees (http://www.wrhi.ac.za/expertise/detail/professor-helen-rees) , to understand what the trial can and cannot tell us. And you’ll hear leading women’s advocates from several countries where the ECHO trial took place share their demands. Take what you learn forward as the ECHO trial raises the volume on an urgent conversation — how to empower African women around their sexual and reproductive health.

In this episode of Px Pulse, hear DAIDS leader Carl Dieffenbach and colleague Director Sheryl Zwerski address the position of non-systemic strategies of prevention at the January AIDS Research Advisory Committee meeting, where funding priorities were presented. (Non-systemic strategies such as topical microbicides do not provide protection throughout the body.) A major leader in HIV prevention science, South African researcher Linda-Gail Bekker talks about an ideal future pipeline, a research agenda she calls the “science of choice”. And hear AVACer Manju Chatani-Gada's discussion with two young women advocates from Zimbabwe, Maximina Jokonya of Africaid and Audrey Nosenga of Zimbabwe Young Positives. They talk about the limits of prevention today and why more choices will mean greater empowerment.

How will future clinical trials need to be designed as HIV prevention evolves…and how can community engagement become stronger along with it? Check out this episode to hear three fierce voices tackle the questions:  Morenike Giwa-Onaiwu of the Houston HIV Cross-Network Community Advisory Board, Stacey Hannah- AVAC’s Director of Research Engagement &  Jeremiah Johnson,the HIV Project Director for the Treatment Action Group.  Together they explore why this conversation is at a critical moment and how to make the most of it.

The bi-ennial conference on HIV research for prevention, or R4P, is “the” place where HIV prevention science, policy & advocacy come together to share insights and identify what’s next for the field. In this episode of Px Pulse, Ntando Yola, a veteran advocate and part of the Coalition to Accelerate and Support Prevention Research (CASPR) shares his advocacy priorities for R4P and beyond. But first, AVAC’s Emily Bass talks about the just-launched 2018 annual report from AVAC, this year titled No Prevention, No End! This year’s state of the field report looks at today’s prevention crisis and offers context, analysis and strategy to turn that crisis around.

In this episode of Px Pulse we take a look at one issue that was center-stage at the recent AIDS 2018 conference in Amsterdam: Preventing new HIV infections. Hear Brad Jones of Weill Cornell Medical College pose a basic question about T cells and what his research could teach us about the immune system. Advocate Dorothy Okatch of the NGO Young 1ove sizes up the challenges for prevention in her country Botswana, where gains in treatment have been lauded. But first, we talk to the head of PEPFAR (the US President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief), Ambassador Deborah Birx, who oversees one of the biggest programs for HIV/AIDS in the world.

Researchers and advocates debate the rationale, risks and ethics of interrupting treatment as part of cure research. This is known as analytic treatment interruption or ATI. AVAC spoke with advocate Udom Likhitwonnawut about when and why treatment interruption might make sense. Two cure researchers—Dr. Steven Deeks and Dr. Dave Margolis—share their differing views on treatment interruption; Deeks is professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, while Margolis leads the Collaboratory of AIDS Researchers for Eradication at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Finally, HIV advocates Flahvia Namwaya and Moses Supercharger Nsubuga talk about what a cure would mean for those living with HIV.

AVAC’s May episode of Px Pulse features four experts steeped in HIV vaccine research. Together they help set expectations for where the field is now and where it is going. For more information about HIV vaccine science go to www.avac.org/px-pulse!

In this episode we bring you two different conversations, each throwing a spotlight on different aspects of HIV prevention advocacy today. AVAC’s Manju Chatani-Gada talks with seasoned and new advocates who attended AVAC’s African Advocacy Partners’ Forum in Johannesburg.  You’ll hear how the forum brought key issues into focus and how these advocates are sharpening their strategies.  Then we turn to a global effort to accelerate prevention. Christine Stegling, the head of the UK-based International HIV/AIDS Alliance joins us to talk about a new initiative by two UN agencies to escalate and maximize HIV prevention in 25 countries with the biggest number of new diagnoses. Dubbed the Global HIV Prevention Coalition, we talk with Christine about how to know if it’s living up to its name.

In March, initial results from the two open-label trials of the dapivirine vaginal ring (HOPE and DREAM) showed that adherence and efficacy improved over the earlier Phase III trials. Learn more about all these trials at https://www.avac.org/podcast/dapivirine-ring. Meanwhile, The ring is also advancing along the pathway to licensure. If approved, it will be the next major prevention option available since the US FDA approved oral PrEP in 2012. In this episode, Zeda Rosenberg of the International Partnerships for Microbicides, which developed the ring, explains the latest findings and spells out how, when, where and if the ring might become an available tool. A trial participant and community leader in Uganda, Ruth* pulls back the curtain on the ups and downs of using the ring, and a Ugandan investigator with the REACH study, Carolyne Akello of the Makere University- Johns Hopkins University Research Collaboration, explains the importance of this trial, the next step in testing the potential of this monthly vaginal ring for young women.

With more efficacy trials underway today than ever before in HIV prevention research, this episode of Px Pulse zooms in on two that have most recently launched: HPTN 084 and HVTN 705.  Veteran Malawian advocate Maureen Luba, Zimbabwe-based bioethicist Paul Ndebele, and leading scientist Dan Barouch each take up the subject of these trials and share their expertise on what they could mean for prevention nationally, regionally and globally.

In this episode hear about recently published findings from a study out of Rakai, Uganda confirm that scaling up a combination of existing interventions, such as voluntary medical male circumcision and antiretroviral therapy provides protection from HIV at the population-level. How do we apply these findings at the global level? How should advocates prepare for results—anticipated in 2019—of the ECHO trial that’s looking at the effect of hormonal contraceptives on HIV risk? And what needs to happen in 2018 to reach long-term global targets for ending the epidemic?   Building on our advocacy agenda laid out in the December episode of Px Pulse this episode expands on the challenges and possibilities for 2018!

AVAC has just published its annual report on the state of the field. AVAC Report 2017: Mixed Messages and How to Untangle Them. It's a must read for anyone tracking the progress of HIV prevention around the world. In this month’s episode of Px Pulse, AVAC’s Director of Strategy and Content Emily Bass shares major highlights from the report and calls for action on the unfinished work of scaling up prevention. Listen for perspective on a US$ 7 billion funding gap and its impact on prevention, hear how leadership at the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) Division of AIDS (DAIDS) should move forward with their research agenda, and get AVAC’s take on epidemic control. Find related resources at AVAC.org.

Every research trial of a new HIV prevention option offers a package of services to protect participants from HIV. This standard of care is essential to the design of an ethical trial.

Leading researcher Dr. Deborah Donnell tells us why the HIV Prevention Trials Network (HPTN) changed the design of one of two trials testing long-acting cabotegravir, as an injectable PrEP. Deb Donnell is an expert statistician, one of the great minds behind trial design and one of the best teachers we know.

Both research and advocacy for HIV prevention are intensifying their focus on young people. Bringing interventions that work for this population holds unique challenges. AVAC’s Manju Chatani-Gada explores how and why prevention research must reach the next generation. You'll hear from two young, South African women at a trial consultation, Sinazo Peter and Anelisa Madalane. And hear from Ntando Yola, a leader in community engagement.