HIV Vaccine Awareness Day: May 18th, 2007

Friday, May 18, 2007 is a significant day in the HIV/AIDS research community-- HIV Vaccine Awareness Day. This is the tenth year of observance and here in Washington, DC it presents an excellent opportunity for scientists who have been searching for a preventive vaccine for HIV and trial participants to become humanized; the faceless lab coat clad research scientist and the individual whose life has been affected by HIV have an opportunity to publicly meet each other and express mutual gratitude for each other’s contribution - as researcher and research subject. Clinical trials take us closer to identifying an effective vaccine as well as energize our collective hope for an end to the epidemic. To date approximately 25,000 HIV-negative individuals have participated in HIV vaccine trials sponsored by both government and privately owned companies. As the search for a HIV vaccine continues, the Capital Area Vaccine Effort (CAVE) in conjunction with the National Institutes of Health/Vaccine Research Center (NIH/VRC), and the US Military HIV Research Program will be using Friday May 18 to thank HIV trial participants for their valiant effort and determination, despite the stigma of HIV, in participating in the clinical trials. May 18 also provides a chance for HIV trial participants to publicly thank research facilities, other volunteers, health professionals and scientists who are conducting and participating in HIV vaccine research. One of the activities planned for HIV Vaccine Awareness Day 2007 is a luncheon/discussion to be held at Academy for Educational Development located at 1825 Connecticut Ave, NW. The topic of the discussion is “Global Health and the Search for an HIV Vaccine” and will begin at 1:00 PM. Join us as we discuss local HIV vaccine research efforts and the role this plays in the larger global health research and treatment movement. The HIV Vaccine Awareness Day Reception scheduled for Friday May 18 at 6:30 pm is another activity being hosted at the Academy for Educational Development at 1825 Connecticut Ave, NW. This is the event at which all of our local HIV vaccine trial participants will be honored and the work being done locally to find an HIV Vaccine will be recognized. The Capital Area Vaccine Effort (CAVE) will present two awards at the reception honoring one organization, and one individual for their support of HIV Vaccine Research in the District. The organizational award will go to the 19th Street Baptist Church. The individual award will go to Scott Simpson, a former CAVE chair. These activities are designed to educate communities about preventive HIV vaccine research while helping to dispel myths, rumors and misinformation. Equally, through community activities like these others are encouraged to be supportive of those individuals involved in HIV vaccine research. In an effort to broaden the community’s discussion on HIV/AIDS and the impact this disease continues to have the Washington DC Community the will be community speak out the day before HIV Awareness Day on Thursday, May 17 at the Westminster Presbyterian Church at 401 I St., S.W. May 18, 2007 is a special day, it a day to be used to intensify the education of our communities about the efforts to find a preventive HIV vaccine. Let us collectively rise to this challenge. ABOUT THE CAPITAL AREA VACCINE EFFORT Capital Area Vaccine Effort is a volunteer panel of individuals from the general public and from the diverse communities affected by AIDS. For more information visit www.aidsvaccine.org.

Double Your Money on HIV Rectal Research

If you are interested in contributing to HIV research, and in particular in research looking at new prevention options for people who have receptive anal sex, there's a short-term offer from AmfAR (the American Foundation for AIDS Research) you should know about. AmfAR will match dollar-for-dollar any contribution made to its current fundraising appeal that involves a trek through the Namibian desert (trekkers cover all their own personal costs). If you sponsor Rowena Johnson, and cite the Rectal Microbicides Working Group (or IRMWG for short) as your organisational affiliation, your contribution plus a matched amount from AmfAR will be earmarked for rectal research. (Please note amounts are in US dollars, and no amount is too small!). Got to www.irmwg.org and click on the link to donate.Dollar-matched offer ends May 20.

Research Advocacy for HIV Prevention: Skills and Challenges for AIDS Activists

forwarded from AVAC and CHAMP During the recent Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI) held in February in Los Angeles, CA, the Community HIV/AIDS Mobilization Project (CHAMP) and the AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition (AVAC) worked with a number of partner organizations to convene "Research Advocacy for HIV Prevention: Skills and Challenges for AIDS Activists". We are pleased to announce that the full report and all of the presentations are now available online at http://www.champnetwork.org/index.php?name=research. The one-day training workshop and half-day advocacy strategy session brought together nearly 100 community advocates and activists from across the US, Europe and Asia to share information and perspectives on HIV prevention research. The sessions offered a unique opportunity for leaders in research, policy and grassroots communities to come together to share information and perspectives on HIV prevention research, examined within a social justice framework. The participants discussed the complexities of the prevention research agenda, including biomedical, behavior and social prevention strategies as well as cross-cutting issues, such as informed consent or partial efficacy. Case studies and research on the impact of race and discrimination on HIV prevention sparked discussions on the importance of structural interventions as well as the overwhelming need for more ethnic and minority researchers in the field. A panel discussion with representatives from diverse AIDS communities on advocacy needs and challenges made two things clear -- prevention is complicated, and prevention is important. The overall report (available in both Word and PDF versions) provides Q&A, debate and analysis that puts the associated slide presentations in context. We suggest viewing the PowerPoint file side-by-side with its section in the report. AVAC and CHAMP hope these materials are helpful, whether you attended the workshop or not. We also hope to conduct additional sessions and would be delighted to hear from you if you or your organization are interested in collaborating with us. Also, look for the upcoming CROI conference report on AVAC's CROI conference page and in an upcoming Network update! Best regards, CHAMP and AVAC Josh Thomas CHAMP - Community HIV/AIDS Mobilization Project josh@champnetwork.org 917-539-7016 Mitchell Warren AVAC - AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition avac@avac.org 212-367-1279

DC HIV/AIDS Research Community Advisory Boards Post Open Letter

Three Washington DC Community Advisory Boards for HIV/AIDS Research have written a joint letter addressing sex and gender data collection in HIV/AIDS research. The letter is being posted online for one month so that interested CABS and community members can sign-on. All sign-ons must be received by May 11th. The letter will then be submitted to the Cross-CAB Working Group for NIH NIAID Division of AIDS (DAIDS) funded HIV/AIDS Research. The three CABs are: The Capital Area Vaccine Effort which serves as the community CAB for the NIH Vaccine Research Center, The Georgetown University Medical Center CAB which is part of the AIDS Clinical Trials Group, and the Washington VA Medical Center CAB, which is part of the International Network for Strategic Initiatives in Global HIV Trials. Most researchers have come to realize that the term 'sex' refers to birth sex or biological sex; and that the term 'gender' refers to someone's gender identity. This was discussed in detail at the Forum for Collaborative HIV/AIDS Research meeting on Sex and Gender, which I attended back in 2003. I guess I thought that since the meeting was co-sponsored by the CDC and the NIH that we would all be on the same page going forward. Sadly, their continues to be significant discrepancies across networks in how data on sex and gender is collected. All we are really asking is for DAIDS to get their act together and collect data on sex and gender in a consistent and appropriate manner. This is the right thing to do for everyone, but it is particularly important for the transgender community. You can find out more by clicking here. I hope that you will join us by signing on to the letter either as an individual or as an organization.

Microbicide Trials Network Local Sites Announced

Twelve institutions today were named by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), as HIV/AIDS clinical trial units (CTUs) for the Microbicide Trials Network (MTN), a new HIV/AIDS clinical trials network established by NIAID last year. The CTUs, located in Africa, India and the United States, will engage in multi-center studies spanning 17 locations in seven countries that seek to determine if topical microbicides can help prevent the sexual transmission of HIV in women. Nearly half of the 39.5 million people living with HIV/AIDS are women, and in Africa, women account for 59 percent of all infected adults. Young women are especially vulnerable. For instance, in sub-Saharan Africa, those aged 15 to 24 with HIV outnumber men of the same age by three to one. In developing countries, HIV most often is spread through unprotected heterosexual intercourse, and educational efforts promoting abstinence, monogamy, and condoms have not been completely effective. Through its CTUs, the MTN is evaluating the potential that microbicides, substances formulated as gels or creams, for example, can reduce or prevent the sexual transmission of HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases when applied topically to the surface of the vagina. The MTN CTUs based outside the United States are the National AIDS Research Institute in Pune, India; the Medical Research Council in Durban, South Africa; and the University of Cape Town, South Africa. U.S. institutions named as CTUs that will be conducting MTN trials exclusively at the international sites with whom they collaborate are the University of California, San Francisco, which operates in Zimbabwe, and Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, both in Baltimore, with affiliations in Malawi and Uganda, respectively. The University of Alabama at Birmingham, was granted two CTU awards, one for its international site in Zambia, and the second for its U.S. site. The remaining CTUs, all U.S.-based, are Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland; Columbia University in New York City, the University of Pittsburgh; and the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. Each of these CTUs has affiliated clinical research sites that will conduct the actual trials, some within the same city or institution and others at additional locations in the same country or region. Accounting for those CTUs with more than one clinical research site, the MTN will be conducting trials at 17 locations in five African countries, the United States and India. The MTN’s clinical research sites are located in Pune, India; Llongwe, Malawi (two sites); Durban, South Africa (four sites); Cape Town, South Africa; Kampala, Uganda; Harare, Zimbabwe (two sites); and Lusaka, Zambia; as well as in New York, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia and Birmingham, Ala. To face the global urgency of the HIV/AIDS epidemic head-on, the MTN anticipates conducting 17 scientifically rigorous and ethically sound clinical trials over the next seven years. Some of these trials will be designed to evaluate microbicides along with other promising HIV/AIDS prevention approaches, such as oral anti-retroviral prophylaxis. “The scope of the crisis requires an aggressive agenda in which the clinical trial units and clinical research sites play an essential role. By virtue of being selected by NIH, our CTUs have proved themselves as the most qualified and the most committed to take part in an endeavor of such great global importance," said Sharon Hillier, Ph.D., MTN principal investigator and professor of obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive sciences and of molecular genetics and biochemistry at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and director of reproductive infectious disease research at the Magee-Womens Research Institute. The MTN brings together international investigators and community partners who are devoted to reducing the sexual transmission of HIV through the development and evaluation of microbicides and who work within a unique infrastructure designed to conduct research that will support licensure of topical microbicide products for widespread use. Based at the University of Pittsburgh and Magee-Womens Research Institute, MTN’s core operations are supported by a central laboratory at the University of Pittsburgh, a statistical and data management center housed within the Statistical Center for HIV/AIDS Research & Prevention at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, and Family Health International, a global organization with expertise conducting clinical protocols. It receives funding from three NIH institutes: NIAID, the National Institute of Mental Health and the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. MTN’s 12 CTUs are among the 60 U.S. and international institutions that recently received awards from the NIAID; NIAID expects to fund a total of 73 CTUs with approximately 145 clinical research sites within the next several months. Each CTU and clinical research site will work with one or more of six NIAID HIV/AIDS clinical trials networks. In addition to the MTN, they include the AIDS Clinical Trials Group, the HIV Prevention Trials Network, the HIV Vaccine Trials Network, the International Maternal Pediatric Adolescent AIDS Clinical Trials Network and the International Network for Strategic Initiatives in Global HIV Trials. For additional information about the HIV/AIDS clinical trials units, see http://www3.niaid.nih.gov/news/QA/CTU07QA.htm . A complete listing of the newly funded CTUs and clinical research sites are available at http://www3.niaid.nih.gov/about/organization/daids/Networks/daidsnetworkunits.htm. For more information about MTN, go to www.mtnstopshiv.org.