Investing in Our Future: HIV Prevention Research | CrowdOutAIDS

Guest Blogger: Emily de Lacy Donaldson, MPH

Project Assistant, AVAC: Global Advocacy for HIV Prevention

By involving young people, UNAIDS hopes to create a more effective strategy to combat the rise of HIV infection in youth. With 3,000 young people infected with HIV each day this proves to be both necessary and challenging.

The opportunity to create our own strategy comes with a lot of responsibility. We must make sure we are educated and active participants. We need to know what works, what solutions are the most effective at preventing the epidemic in young people and where our limited resources should be spent.

To get from 3,000 new infections each day to zero, we need proven techniques. We know by now that the tools currently at our disposal are not enough. We also need new ways of preventing HIV, such as microbicides, pre-exposure prophylaxis (prEP) and a preventive vaccine. The HIV prevention research field is ripe with new developments and pipelines of new approaches are being tested. As today?s youth, these future options will be ours and we need to ensure continued investment in research for new HIV prevention options.

Since 2004, the HIV Vaccines and Microbicides Resource Tracking Working Group has followed investments in HIV prevention research. The information collected is used by advocates, researchers, funders and policy makers to assess how much is spent on HIV prevention research & development (R&D) and what areas need additional funds.

The Working Group is a collaboration of AVAC: Global Advocacy for HIV Prevention, the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI), the International Partnership for Microbicides (IPM) and the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS).

Tracking investments in HIV prevention research is a necessary part of our strategy development. We can use these figures to advocate?for areas that need increased resources, to hold accountable public, private and philanthropic donors to sustain funding and to make sure all HIV prevention tools are receiving adequate investments.

As we face a widening global HIV funding gap, we need to use all resources available to ensure efficient and effective investments in a wide range of options. We need to be smart about what we want and how much money it costs. We need to show the world that now is the time to invest in young people!

About our Guest Blogger

Emily supports the annual resource tracking of the HIV Vaccine and Microbicide Resource Tracking Working Group and AVAC?s biomedical HIV prevention clinical trials database management and policy-related advocacy. She worked as a global health consultant on HIV treatment access and was an American Jewish World Service Public Health Fellow with the Positive Women Network (PWN+) in Chennai, India prior to becoming a prevention advocate. She has an MPH in health policy from Columbia University?s Mailman School of Public Health and a BA in women?s studies from Barnard College.

About AVAC | Global Advocacy for HIV Prevention

Founded in 1995, AVAC is a non-profit organization that uses education, policy analysis, advocacy and a network of global collaborations to accelerate the ethical development and global delivery of AIDS vaccines,?male circumcision, microbicides,?PrEP?and other emerging HIV prevention options as part of a comprehensive response to the pandemic.

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Source: http://www.crowdoutaids.org/investing-in-our-future-hiv-prevention-research/

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