October 15th is the 20th Anniversary of National Latinx AIDS Awareness Day

Each year on October 15, National Latinx AIDS Awareness Day (NLAAD) focuses on HIV in Hispanic/Latino and Latinx communities. The Latino Commission on AIDS (LCOA) and Hispanic Federation created this observance in 2003, making 2023 the 20th anniversary of this observance day. This year’s theme is “Do it your way. Do it right.” which urges the community, specifically those who are HIV-negative and sexually active, to choose one of many preventative options to maintain their negative status and to do it in their own way but in a smart and unique way.

NLAAD is an opportunity to share information and the following resources about HIV:

• Watch HIV.gov’s conversation with Guillermo Chacon, President of LCOA in English and Spanish.
• Downloads and links to the NLAAD logo and shareable graphics and infographics at nlaad.org
• Use the national viral suppression campaign materials from “Celebro mi salud,” which is part of the “I am a Work of ART” campaign. 
• Resources on HIV testing, prevention, treatment, and stigma on CDC’s Let’s Stop HIV Together campaign page.
• HIV.gov facts about the HIV epidemic in the United States and links to resources on the impact of HIV on racial and ethnic minorities, including a CDC factsheet on HIV among Hispanic and Latino community members.

News from the CFAR

Congress fails to reauthorize PEPFAR; Dr. Dorothy Dow and Dr. Blandina Mmbaga warn “This Is Who Will Suffer Most if US AIDS Funding Ends”

Young girls with U.S. and Kenya flags wait to greet U.S. Ambassador to Kenya Robert Godec as he visits a President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) project for girls’ empowerment in Nairobi on March 10, 2018. JONATHAN ERNST/AFP via Getty Images

“Sitting in a conference room in the shadow of Mount Kilimanjaro in northern Tanzania, we cautiously asked a group of young Tanzanians who are living with HIV to contemplate the unthinkable: What if PEPFAR ends?

It’s a question many Americans may not have considered. PEPFAR — the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief — is arguably the U.S. government’s most successful global health program, credited for preventing an estimated 25 million deaths from AIDS since its start in 2003. Now, after decades of wide bipartisan support, the program is in serious danger, as some Republicans in Congress are threatening to hold up its reauthorization over baseless claims it funds abortions.

Those debates seem incomprehensible to the young people with whom we work. For them, PEPFAR has been their lifeline. From the time they were born, many watched their biological mothers die of AIDS. Too many have endured traumatic home transitions, extreme stigma, poverty and hopelessness.

They are the generation PEPFAR sought to save — and it has. U.S. funding has made antiretroviral therapy widely accessible in countries such as Tanzania, turning HIV infection from a near-certain death sentence to a treatable infection that can be successfully managed with medication. PEPFAR has supported education programs to teach people living with HIV that they can keep the virus suppressed, and that they can have children without passing on HIV infection. It has lifted them from suffocating despair and has enabled them to have hope for their future.

There is an expression in Tanzania, “Tumia dawa kutimiza ndoto,” which means, “Take your medicine to achieve your dreams.” This is the contract PEPFAR has offered a generation of Africans living with HIV. But the contract goes both ways. Why would the U.S. government do so much to give these young people hope, only to take it away?” Read more.

Dr. Dorothy Dow and Dr. Blandina Mmbaga penned these words in an opinion piece published last month in The Messenger titled This is Who Will Suffer Most if US AIDS Funding Ends. Dow is an associate professor at the Duke Global Health Institute and the Division of Pediatric Infectious Diseases at Duke University, and Co-Director of the Duke CFAR Clinical Core. She has lived and worked in Moshi, Tanzania, since 2011 and co-developed a program, Sauti ya Vijana, a mental health intervention for youth living with HIV. Mmbaga is a Tanzanian pediatrician and professor who directs the Kilimanjaro Clinical Research Institute. With Dow, she co-leads Duke University’s partnership on global health research and training with the Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Centre in Tanzania.

Last Saturday, the deadline passed for Congress to renew long-term funding for PEPFAR, despite its passage of a spending bill to avoid a government shutdown. While PEPFAR remains funded for now, Congress will need to reauthorize the program in a separate bill for a longer-term extension, and its future is in jeopardy. As Drs. Dow and Mmbaga write, failed reauthorization could threaten the progress made against HIV in sub-Saharan Africa, particularly to protect adolescent girls and young women.

Dr. Chris Beyrer, Associate CFAR Director leading Global HIV efforts at Duke, serves on the PEPFAR Scientific Advisory Board and works closely with the Chief Science Officer, Mike Reid. He shared his praise of PEPFAR’s monumental successes and concern for the future: “The PEPFAR program has had strong bipartisan support for 20 years and through four US administrations—and that is because it has worked: Saving millions of lives, preventing millions of infections, and bringing hope to HIV affected families, communities, and regions. To see the program threatened now by political infighting is tragic—this is too important a program to put at risk.” Dr. John Bartlett, who has spent more than three decades supporting capacity strengthening efforts in Moshi, echoed this sentiment: “The public health benefits and profound impact on the global HIV pandemic are well documented and profound. To withdraw support for such a successful bipartisan program which has created global goodwill toward the United States based on a political falsehood is immoral.”

Learn more about the key facts surrounding PEPFAR reauthorization.

Read the full opinion article by Dow and Mmbaga and read this article on the CFAR website.

Michael Relf appointed Interim Dean of School of Nursing following departure of Vincent Guilamo-Ramos

Effective October 1st, Michael Relf is serving as the interim dean of the Duke University School of Nursing following the departure of Vincent Guilamo-Ramos, who stepped down from his roles at Duke to direct a new Johns Hopkins School of Nursing health policy, research, and practice institute that will be based in Washington, DC.

As reported in Duke Today: "A visionary thinker, scientist and change agent in academia and health care, Dean Guilamo-Ramos has been a champion of nursing at Duke and on the national stage. His leadership, research and policy work has significantly advanced the science of mitigating harmful social determinants of health, and ignited a movement that promotes the limitless possibilities of a nurse-led model of care to revolutionize health care by improving access, outcomes and costs while advancing health equity.

Soon after his appointment, Dean Guilamo-Ramos led a collaborative process that refocused the school’s mission and 5-year strategic plan on developing and promoting a future-focused cadre of nurses skilled to advance health equity and social justice. His vision for nurse-led health care promotes highly skilled clinical expertise and strengthens nurses’ capacities in research, science and advocacy.

Michael Relf, Professor of Nursing and Global Health and Associate Dean for Global and Community Health Initiatives at DUSON, will serve as interim dean while the university conducts a national search for Guilamo-Ramos’s successor. Relf has been a faculty member at DUSON since 2008. Prior to joining DUSON, he was the Chair of the Department of Nursing at Georgetown University. 

Relf has extensive experience in nursing and higher education and maintains a program of research focused on intervention adaptation, development, and testing to mitigate the negative effects of stigma among persons with HIV. He is a Fellow of the Academy of Nursing Education and the American Academy of Nursing and is the editor-in-chief of the Journal of the Association of Nurses in AIDS Care." Relf also serves as an Associate Director of the Duke CFAR Social & Behavioral Sciences Core.

Read the announcement on Duke Today.

Join the Inter-CFAR Transgender Health Working Group

The Inter-CFAR Transgender Health Working Group was formed in June 2021. The goal of the Inter-CFAR Transgender Health Working Group is to bring together researchers and communities across the CFARs working to promote the health and well-being of transgender communities.

The pooled knowledge and resources of the group support the following working group pillars: 1) advancing the science; 2) supporting community empowerment and collaboration; and 3) developing and strengthening networks.

Membership is available to all investigators at CFAR institutions.

Anyone interested in joining this group should email Jordan_cobb@med.unc.edu

Help us out by answering a brief, 2 question survey!

If you did not complete the survey at the CFAR retreat, please take a minute to respond! The survey asks you to select the CFAR cores from which you have received services in the past 12 months, and the cores from which you want to receive communications.

Complete the survey.

Symposium on Emerging Infectious Diseases



October 24-25, 2023 |Duke Karsh Alumni and Visitors Center

The Emerging Infectious Diseases program at Duke-NUS Medical School and the Duke Center for Virology are co-organizing a Symposium on Emerging Infectious Diseases, with a focus on virology, which will be held on the Duke campus. This is a continued effort to build ties between the Duke-NUS EID program and leaders in the field with shared research interests in the RTP region. The meeting will be held over two days (October 24-25, 2023) in the Karsh Alumni and Visitors Center at Duke. We envision that this meeting will serve as a forum for broad ranging discussions on molecular biology, microbial pathogenesis, immunology, global health, and pandemic preparedness. We hope that you will be able to attend and participate.

Learn more and register.

NIH OAR Workshop - Community Voices: Forging the Path Forward for HIV Self-testing and Personalized Viral Load Monitoring



November 1-2, 2023 | 1-5pm ET | Zoom

NIH OAR is pleased to host the November workshop “Community Voices: Forging the Path Forward for HIV Self-testing and Personalized Viral Load Monitoring,” a community-oriented workshop focusing on advancing the development of HIV diagnostic and monitoring technologies.  

The workshop will take place November 1–2, 2023 and will bring together HIV community members, HIV researchers, HIV technology and device developers, industry consultants, and regulatory agency representatives to discuss ways to increase access to rapid at-home, on-demand, and point-of-care HIV self-testing and viral load monitoring tools.  

To ensure we have a diverse and engaged audience, please consider inviting your networks by sharing the following messages. Registration closes October 30, 2023.

Register for the virtual workshop.

Registration open for 2023 Inter-CFAR Women and HIV Symposium



December 6-7, 2023 | San Francisco, CA

Registration is open for the 2023 Inter-CFAR Women and HIV Symposium is open. There will be no registration fee. Register by November 27th.

The Symposium will feature three sessions on the following topics, as well as two networking lunches and an NIH Research Priorities and Listening Session:

• Reproductive Health and HIV: From Policy to Practice
• ​Speakers include: Judy Levinson, Elizabeth Lowenthal, and a patient perspective
• Antiretroviral Therapy and Metabolism in the Era of INSTIs: Sex and Gender Differences
• ​Speakers include: Cecile Lahiri, Amanda Willig, Julie Dumond
• Aging with HIV across the Gender Spectrum
• ​Speakers include: Denise Russo, Peter Hunt, Tonia Poteat, Jordan Lake

View the agenda for the symposium.

Hotel

We have arranged a room block at the newly remodeled Holiday Inn Golden Gateway from December 5th through 7th, at a rate of $135/night. We will arrange shuttle transport to the meeting venue from the hotel. Reservations can be made here: CFAR Meeting (More details on the website).



Questions can be sent to Lauren Sterling (lauren.sterling@ucsf.edu). This meeting is supported in part by grant R13HD113489 with funding from U.S. National Institutes of Health institutes: NICHD, NIAID, and NIDDK.  

Learn more and register for the symposium.

Evidence2Practice (E2P): Leveraging Implementation Science to Promote Careers in HIV Research Among Students From Historically Black Colleges and Universities.

Okeke NL, Ware KB, Campbell R, Taylor J, Hung F, Questell C, Brickler MP, Smith UD, Nawas GT, Hanlen-Rosado E, Chan C, Bosworth HB, Aifah A, Corneli A.

J Acquir Immune Defic Syndr. 2023 Oct 1;94(Suppl 2):S65-S72. doi: 10.1097/QAI.0000000000003263.

Longitudinal changes in neurocognitive performance related to drug use intensity in a sample of persons with and without HIV who use illicit stimulants.

Towe SL, Tang R, Gibson MJ, Zhang AR, Meade CS.

Drug Alcohol Depend. 2023 Oct 1;251:110923. doi: 10.1016/j.drugalcdep.2023.110923. Epub 2023 Aug 9.

MASI, a Smartphone App to Improve Treatment Adherence Among South African Adolescents and Young Adults With HIV: Protocol for a Pilot Randomized Controlled Trial.

Mulawa MI, Hoare J, Knippler ET, Mtukushe B, Matiwane M, Muessig KE, Al-Mujtaba M, Wilkinson TH, Platt A, Egger JR, Hightow-Weidman LB.

JMIR Res Protoc. 2023 Sep 19;12:e47137. doi: 10.2196/47137.

HIV specific Th1 responses are altered in Ugandans with HIV and Schistosoma mansoni coinfection.

Obuku AE, Lugemwa JK, Abaasa A, Joloba M, Ding S, Pollara J, Ferrari G, Harari A, Pantaleo G, Kaleebu P.

BMC Immunol. 2023 Aug 29;24(1):25. doi: 10.1186/s12865-023-00554-3.

Impact of pathogen genetics on clinical phenotypes in a population of Talaromyces marneffei from Vietnam.

Sephton-Clark P, Nguyen T, Hoa NT, Ashton P, van Doorn HR, Ly VT, Le T, Cuomo CA.

Genetics. 2023 Aug 9;224(4):iyad100. doi: 10.1093/genetics/iyad100.

Statistical and machine learning methods for immunoprofiling based on single-cell data.

Zhang J, Li J, Lin L.

Hum Vaccin Immunother. 2023 Aug 1;19(2):2234792. doi: 10.1080/21645515.2023.2234792. Epub 2023 Jul 24.

Calcineurin contributes to RNAi-mediated transgene silencing and small interfering RNA production in the human fungal pathogen Cryptococcus neoformans.

Yadav V, Mohan R, Sun S, Heitman J.

bioRxiv. 2023 Jul 26:2023.07.25.550548. doi: 10.1101/2023.07.25.550548. Preprint.

Environmentally Resilient Microfluidic Point-of-Care Immunoassay Enables Rapid Diagnosis of Talaromycosis.

Kinnamon DS, Heggestad JT, Liu J, Nguyen T, Ly V, Hucknall AM, Fontes CM, Britton RJ, Cai JP, Chan JF, Yuen KY, Le T, Chilkoti A.

ACS Sens. 2023 Jun 23;8(6):2228-2236. doi: 10.1021/acssensors.3c00209. Epub 2023 Jun 6.

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