As longtime AVAC Report readers know, we develop a "3-D agenda" every year that summarizes our take on the critical advocacy priorities for the field of HIV prevention. Every year, with our partners, we take on these challenges. But, the way that we've presented that agenda in the past hasn't always been clear about what we, as AVAC, are taking on ourselves. So this year, as we near global deadlines and wrestle with the question of "Now what?", we want to change that—and share our answers with you.
AVAC has a bold agenda for 2020 and beyond.
We will work with our partners to influence the post-2020 agenda to ensure that funding for prevention increases and money is directed to the geographies and populations with the most need, and to the most effective interventions. We will continue to build and sustain a global cadre of smart, evidence-based, impact-driven advocates who stand at the front lines of this fight. We will continue to raise our voices for women's HIV prevention and help craft the global prevention agenda for women. We will ensure civil society perspectives are informing and influencing decision-making on current and next-generation trials and trial designs. We will guide and pressure developers, funders and policy makers to ensure comprehensive plans for all relevant populations for products entering and coming out of the product pipeline in 2020. And we will identify, raise up and advocate for ways to increase uptake and continuation rates for prevention methods through a people-centered lens.
When we look specifically at our calls to action in the AVAC Report, here's what you can look for and expect from us in the coming year:
1
• We will take our letter to Winnie Byanyima to UNAIDS and the Global HIV Prevention Coalition. We will assemble a delegation of young people, particularly women and key populations, and carry forward the specific requests related to UHC, targets for research and contraceptive-HIV integration.
• We will work at the country level to find ways for activists to use community-led monitoring and analysis of national data to point out programs that work and need to be scaled up and those that are failing. And we'll lift up those in power who are our allies and hold those who block progress to account.
• We will continue to support and develop a cadre of HIV prevention advocacy leaders through our Advocacy Fellows program, and to grow a powerful activist and advocacy network through our COMPASS and CASPR programs, focusing on accountability from research to rollout.
2
• We will push PEPFAR to lead the way in adopting new approaches to measuring PrEP impact, starting with the Country Operational Plan guidance for FY2020 and work with our civil society partners in the COMPASS coalition—who engage with PEPFAR and national PrEP programs year-round—to raise awareness of what the effective-use agenda is and how to move it forward.
• We will work, with our partners in CASPR, the Prevention Market Manager and other networks to set milestones for the prevention research pipeline, from the launch of trials through to product introduction.
• We will build advocacy power by collaboratively developing and using curricula that explain complex concepts like new trial design, epidemic transition metrics, prevention cascades and effective use. As AVAC has always done, we will make the materials that communities of advocates use to demand action in an ever-changing field.
• We will work with networks to see new research targets secure wide buy-in and public endorsement.
3
• With our "multilayered" prevention agenda, we're advancing a new term and a new set of priorities. This means more work and also more opportunities for true change. We will take the call for multilayered prevention on the road, to see if it catalyzes discussion and fits in with other ongoing activism and advocacy. We will work throughout 2020 to set up the meetings, step up to the mics, and take the stands that can make this a reality.
• Along with our longstanding collaborators throughout East and Southern Africa, we will continue to advance an agenda for multisectoral prevention—including HIV and SRHR integration—in today's clinical services and research for tomorrow's multipurpose products.
• We'll work with advocacy and media partners to contextualize and understand multilayered prevention in their communities and to translate what they learn into context-specific action.
• We will expand our product introduction work to take on the dual contraceptive and PrEP pill, exploring the path to licensure and catalyzing action on introduction plans that would provide a near-term solution and build a platform for future multipurpose prevention options.
