AIDS 2018 Pre-conferences

SATURDAY PRE-CONFERENCES THAT REQUIRE SIGN UP

Reflecting the increased need for engaged social science and humanities research in the global HIV response, the focus of the meeting will be on “Intensifying the social in the biomedical era”, including:

• Innovations and disparities in HIV education, prevention and care from social science and humanities perspectives
• The social science of combination HIV prevention
• The social science of implementation and translational research
• Community-based and participatory HIV social research
• Theorizing and analysing relations between the social sciences, humanities and biomedicine in HIV and AIDS
• Models of sustaining social science and humanities research on HIV and AIDS
• Contemporary social science and humanities research on HIV and AIDS.

Poor sexual and reproductive health and HIV share common root causes, and yet the respective responses to HIV and to SRHR remain largely unaligned and uncoordinated. Now more than ever, there is a need for joint action, but this need remains underappreciated, inadequately resourced and insufficiently leveraged for the greater good.

This pre-conference is aimed at creating a vibrant and inclusive platform on which to foster thematic learning and networking focused on this integration, facilitate global connections, and further unite HIV and SRHR responses to achieve the ambitious targets set within the Sustainable Development Goals, including lessons learned on the impact of the Global Gag Rule.

With the Netherlands, a long-standing champion and supporter of SRHR, as the host country, AIDS 2018 provides the perfect opportunity to help guarantee the health, rights and general well-being of all people, including women and girls, people living with HIV and key populations.

This pre-conference is a partnership between IRGT and global and regional transgender organizations. It will provide a networking platform for transgender activists, researchers, public health officials, multilateral organizations, transgender people living with HIV and global donors to exchange most recent research, best practices and advocacy strategies that advance the goal of universal access to health and safety for trans people.

Sessions will explore various aspects of successful demand creation, including:

The event will feature two plenary sessions, offer skills-building sessions and activities on translating and applying research, violence prevention, programme development, services delivery, working with transgender people, advocacy strategies and sexual health. It will also facilitate affinity and strategizing opportunities among transgender people across regions, age and sero-status.

This pre-conference will create a playbook for successful planning and implementation of HIV prevention demand creation by linking public health science with marketing and communications expertise. We will investigate proven approaches to understand end users and their journeys, and craft messages that motivate behavioural change and achieve intended health outcomes. We aim to inspire excitement, build capacity and activate creative ideas.

Sessions will explore various aspects of successful demand creation, including:

• Common definitions: What is demand creation, user-centred design, social marketing and other key approaches?
• Insight generation: What market research is needed and how should it be used?
• Communications strategy/tactics: How do we create desire for HIV prevention?
• Media mix: How and where do we need to communicate?
• Monitoring and iteration: How do we know what is/is not working and rapidly adjust programmes?
• Demand creation challenge: How do we showcase innovative approaches to HIV prevention demand creation?

Adolescent girls and young women (AGYW) are at the forefront of the HIV epidemic. Due to a host of interpersonal and social issues, they are among the most vulnerable populations when it comes to contracting HIV and other sexually transmitted infections.

This pre-conference workshop will: explore avenues for addressing the needs of AGYW; take a focused look at the needs of key populations within the broader AGYW population, such as sex workers and orphans; and discuss concerns and needs of this vulnerable population. Pre-conference participants will hear from AGYW experts and have an opportunity to share their questions, concerns and best practices alongside leading organizations working with AGYW through interactive activities and open dialogue.

What works to tackle structural drivers of HIV? How can this evidence inform policy making and programme implementation? This session synthesizes evidence on structural drivers of HIV, including findings from studies conducted as part of the STRIVE research consortium. Policy makers, implementers, civil society advocates and researchers will lead a series of panel discussions on ways to tackle structural drivers that impact on: Sustainable Development Goals to achieve multiple benefits; the delivery of biomedical prevention technologies, including pre-exposure prophylaxis; and the sexual health of adolescent girls and young women. Themes related to HIV risk will include addressing alcohol, gender inequality, social norms, intimate partner violence, stigma and transactional sex.

The panel members will debate evidence on a new co-financing model for multiple-benefit interventions. Delegates will receive evidence briefs, technical summaries and guidance on measuring structural drivers. This session is designed for policy makers, implementers, civil society advocates and researchers.

WALK-IN PRE-CONFERENCES ON SATURDAY

Our diverse panel will discuss the myriad of opportunities for active engagement of the private sector in transforming public healthcare supply chain operations. Discussions will include how technological innovation, serialization and authentication can be leveraged to realize transparency in the delivery of health products to the world’s most vulnerable patients.

Embracing a decade of experience across donor, government and private organizations, our panel will deliberate on the opportunities, barriers and actions required to achieve responsive supply chains – supply chains that demonstrate agility to accomplish the balance between volume and quality while maximizing each dollar needed for scaling up care and treatment programmes.

To receive updates, sign up here.

An incredible strength of the HIV response is the broad engagement of stakeholders, including people living with HIV and communities, and informed advocacy. As the HIV cure research field develops, it is important to translate the latest research and make sure that it is accessible to the community to leverage a well-informed, multidisciplinary network of stakeholders to advocate for the continued prioritization of HIV cure in the global health agenda.

The IAS is partnering with international and local civil society organizations to organize an interactive one-day research literacy workshop as an AIDS 2018 pre-conference event to provide accessible information on current research directions, emerging collaborations with fields beyond HIV, and challenges for an HIV cure. The workshop will be open to AIDS 2018 delegates interested in learning about the HIV cure field, but aimed in particular at peer educators, advocates, young researchers and researchers from outside the field.

To receive updates, sign up here.

The Global HIV Clinical Forum is specifically developed for global HIV-treating clinicians. Forum participants will receive updates on the latest developments related to integrase inhibitors, will be able to share their clinical experience, and will be encouraged to present the results from their ongoing and completed cohorts/research programmes on integrase inhibitors.

This state-of-the-art scientific programme offers translational plenary lectures, followed by ample time for Q&A and debate, stimulating interaction to bridge the knowledge gap between experts and the HIV-treating community. Delegates can look forward to topics on basic science, resistance, novel therapies, pharmacology, strategies, reduced regimens and special populations, and clinical case presentations to discuss real-life challenges, lively panel discussions and the very well-received “meet the professor” lunch.

To receive updates, sign up here.

SUNDAY PRE-CONFERENCES THAT REQUIRE SIGN-UP

Hosted by the ANAC, global nursing leaders, this pre-conference is intended for nurses, nurse allies, other healthcare workers, policy makers and donors. ANAC will address the divide between frontline health workers, in particular the nursing workforce, and policy makers and donors. All three stakeholders aim for epidemic control, yet do not always work in sync to achieve this goal. Unrecognized barriers to nursing workforce capacity reduce efficiency, stunt innovation and perpetuate missed opportunities.

This session will utilize a nursing perspective to examine the barriers and identify solutions to enhance antiretroviral scale up, effective prevention, and better population and individual health outcomes in both resource-rich and resource-limited settings. Through expert panels and participant involvement, we will identify recommendations and pathways to maximize the impact of nurses and other frontline health workers.

The lives of people with HIV will never be the same again. People worldwide are mobilizing to put an end to misinformation about HIV transmission by spreading the news that Undetectable = Untransmittable (U=U). With research confirming that people on effective HIV treatment cannot pass on the virus to sexual partners, U=U has the power to transform HIV prevention and care and to liberate people from stigma and fear.

The U=U pre-conference will bring global partners together for the first time to celebrate this message of freedom and hope. By learning about the latest science, messaging and advocacy campaigns around the globe, participants will gain the tools to put these groundbreaking facts into action in their own communities. Come and join a growing movement of more than 550 partners in 70 countries. Together, we will rewrite the HIV risk narrative and break the barriers that have held back people with HIV for too long.

In 2003, over 120 treatment activists from 67 countries gathered in Cape Town, South Africa for the first International Treatment Preparedness Summit. It was a time when HIV treatment access was poor, and activists were still grappling with the brunt of the epidemic. Fifteen years later, how far have we come? What is the state of our activism today? And, how do we set a radical agenda for what is left to do?

These are the questions we as activists will try to answer. Using tech-powered panel discussions and interactive dialogue sessions, activists will strategize and develop concrete next steps to effectively advocate for the right to health for ALL. Make sure your voice is heard!

The Summit is intended for PLHIV and key population activists, civil society advocates, program implementers, government officials, and all stakeholders interested in and seeking to influence a global, community-led HIV advocacy agenda.

Join us at the Joep Lange Institute pre-conference, hosted by Chairs Mark Dybul, Nduku Kilonzo and Lillian Mworeko, where we will challenge and activate you to use your experience and creativity to be smarter, better and more targeted in the HIV response. The global 90-90-90 targets are ambitious, however meeting them is not the end of AIDS. The response needs to be faster and better.

We gather key stakeholders to unpack the challenges that threaten a successful and sustainable global HIV response. Our agenda:

• Reinvigorate primary prevention - we need substantial investment in primary HIV prevention
• Lifelong quality treatment - treatment must be of quality and for life
• Innovative HIV funding approaches are needed - integration of HIV into UHC strategies is essential for effective HIV response and for successful UHC strategy
• Scale up community-based service delivery and advocacy – communities need resources to effectively deliver services, and to reach and engage the most vulnerable
• In defence of human rights - HIV is as much a socio-political problem as it is medical

This interactive day-long workshop will bring together approximately 300 clinics and community groups to learn about the Clinic-CBO Collaboration (C³) methodology and build it into their work planning back home. The workshop will connect the global and the local and discuss how innovative approaches can be taken to fulfilling prevention of mother-to-child transmission and paediatric HIV service delivery and scale up in a shrinking resource pool.

The workshop will be the start of a week-long process that will run through the conference around C³ and will challenge groups to leave Amsterdam focused on those aspects of their collaborations that can lead to improved programme performance. The intention is for participating groups to initiate and develop funding proposals around the C³ methodology to be submitted to PACF for consideration.

This pre-conference provides an opportunity for participants to share lessons, successes and challenges at the country, regional and global levels in implementing the recommendations of the Global Commission on HIV and the Law. There will also be an opportunity to discuss the early results of the evaluation of the Global Commission on HIV and the Law and its follow up in 88 counties.

Looking ahead and in the context of the 2030 Agenda and the commitment to leave no-one behind, participants will discuss and debate future directions for the commission and its follow up. The supplementary chapter of the commission’s report will be launched at the pre-conference. Participants will be encouraged to identify actions to further strengthen efforts to end stigma, discrimination and violence in the context of HIV and advance an effective, sustainable human rights-based response to HIV.

In the field of HIV, implementation science (IS) can help develop and measure evidence-based strategies to improve service delivery across the HIV care continuum (prevention, linkage to and retention in care), as well as overall quality of life. IS identifies barriers to the translation of evidence into policy and practice.

Utilizing a collaborative committee of academic institution experts in IS, health care providers and community representatives, this workshop will be both theoretical and tactical to explore IS research/frameworks, provide opportunities to discuss key learnings thus far, raise awareness of the relevance of IS to HIV, and create a sense of urgency about its importance in the field of HIV. If we are going to achieve the UNAIDS 90-90-90 targets, we need to identify gaps in the HIV care continuum and utilize an IS approach to drive consistency and information sharing, and ultimately improve outcomes for PLHIV.

WALK-IN PRE-CONFERENCES ON SUNDAY

C3PNO is the data-coordinating centre for the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) longitudinal HIV cohorts. We will demo and discuss opportunities related to the new C3PNO virtual repository, which links laboratory, clinical, substance use, behavioural and biological data. Our goal is to stimulate research with outside investigators and encourage new collaborations with international cohorts studying substance use in the context of HIV pathogenesis.

C3PNO fosters cutting-edge science powered by the cohorts’ combined sample size of approximately 12,000 participants. These cohorts span North America and some, like ALIVE and VIDUS, reach back over 25 years. The cohorts include injecting drug users, men who have sex with men, and clinically based populations. We have assembled a team of researchers with global leadership in HIV prevention, clinical science, behavioural science, immunology, modelling and bioethics to promote high-impact science with the NIDA cohort data.

To receive updates, sign up here.

Join Grassroot Soccer, partner organizations and the adolescents they serve to debate approaches to putting youth at the centre of HIV and sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) interventions. This interactive and engaging day of panel discussions and participatory workshops will include evidence from the field, insights from Grassroot Soccer young adult mentor “coaches”, its innovative soccer-based approach to adolescent health, and perspectives from its network of partners. Together, they will look at the most successful approaches to build adolescents’ ASSETS in HIV and SRHR knowledge and the confidence to use it, ACCESS to quality health services, and ADHERENCE to treatment and healthy behaviours.

Participants will come up with innovative and fun solutions to put adolescents at the centre of creating these approaches. Attendees will leave with practical skills and resources to implement adolescent-centred design into their own organizations and communities.

To receive updates, sign up here.

In high HIV burden countries, up to 30% of children are now HIV exposed uninfected (HEU) but not HIV unaffected, as HEU children experience worse outcomes than their unexposed peers. Since 2015, the HEU Child and Adolescent Workshop has provided a unique forum for policy and scientific dialogue around the short, medium and long-term well-being of HEU children.

This year, we will look beyond the biological consequences of HIV-exposure to explore its implications for early childhood development policy and programming and its psychosocial impact on adolescents. Join us for an exciting half-day session of expert presentations, interactive panel discussions and open dialogue around the personal and public health implications of these challenges.

To receive updates, sign up here.

Similar to HIV, tuberculosis (TB) often affects the most vulnerable populations. TB/HIV co-infection is a major obstacle in the response to HIV, with HIV causing a more than 20-fold increase in the risk of latent TB reactivation, and TB accelerating the decline of immune function among people living with HIV. With at least one-third of people living with HIV co-infected with latent TB, the ramifications of TB/HIV co-infection are staggering.

TB 2018 will be an opportunity to highlight the key scientific challenges related to TB and TB/HIV research on prevention, diagnosis and treatment to set the stage for the UN General Assembly high-level meeting on TB. With the theme, Bridging the TB and HIV communities, TB 2018 will focus on cutting-edge research gaps to address concrete service delivery issues, translating science into practice.

To receive updates, sign up here.

Women Deliver and the IAS are embarking on a groundbreaking new partnership to unite two of the world’s largest movements towards a common goal: ensuring fulfilment of health and rights for adolescent girls and young women. This pre-conference will focus on how to integrate national and global efforts to end the HIV epidemic and achieve sexual and reproductive health (SRH) and rights. Ensuring universal access to SRH services, achieving gender equality and empowering adolescent girls and young women to exercise their sexual and reproductive rights are critical for an effective HIV response.

Generation Now will host a series of pre-conference meetings to unite advocates, scientists and policy makers under a common agenda for women and girls at the AIDS 2018 and the Women Deliver 2019 Conference.

To receive updates, sign up here.

HIV population-based surveys measure the reach and impact of HIV programs through household surveys in countries most affected by the HIV epidemic. Each survey offers household HIV counseling and testing conducted by survey staff, with return of results, and collects information about individual access to preventive care and treatment services for adults and children. The results measure national and regional progress toward UNAIDS' 90-90-90 goals and guide policy and funding priorities.

This pre-conference focuses on recent results from PEPFAR-funded HIV population-based surveys in sub-Saharan Africa. Population-based HIV Impact Assessment (PHIA) surveys were implemented by ICAP at Columbia University in partnership with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and ministries of health. The pre-conference will examine recent PHIA results from West and Central Africa as well as southern Africa and will include an overview of recent innovations in HIV population surveys.

To receive updates, sign up here.

For more information about the event, please click here.

2-DAY PRE-CONFERENCES THAT REQUIRE SIGN-UP

According to UNAIDS, there has been substantial global progress made since 2014 in attaining the 90-90-90 targets. More than two-thirds of all people living with HIV (PLHIV) globally knew their HIV status at the end of 2016. Of these, 77% were accessing ART, and 82% of PLHIV on ART had suppressed viral loads. Building on the success of the 2017 90-90-90 Targets Workshop, the 2018 workshop will feature a ministerial and high-level panel discussion aimed at reviewing global and national progress towards and challenges to attainment of the 90-90-90 targets. The workshop will also include presentations about game-changing innovations.

Additionally, the workshop will include plenary sessions and panel discussions focused on: connecting the dots between 90-90-90 and HIV epidemic control; reinforcing the critical engagement of affected communities; lifecycle and population-specific challenges; the evolving antiretroviral landscape; leveraging HIV platforms for other health-related Sustainable Development Goals; and financing the global AIDS response.

2-DAY WALK-IN PRE-CONFERENCES

HIV and other sexually transmitted infections (STIs) have been inextricably linked since the start of the HIV epidemic. A new era of global health and development driven by the Sustainable Development Goals offers a fresh opportunity to address critical STI health issues through greater involvement, interaction and coordination between the HIV and STI fields. AIDS 2018, with its focus on HIV within the broader global health context, offers an excellent opportunity to explore the state of knowledge, best practices and a research agenda regarding HIV and STIs.

In the era of universal treatment and pre-exposure prophylaxis, STI 2018 will identify new challenges, emerging issues and opportunities for research and programme implementation to counter increases in bacterial STIs being observed in many settings. The conference will also explore critical issues related to antimicrobial resistance and reproductive, maternal, newborn, child and adolescent health to ensure an integrated approach.

To receive updates, sign up here.