Plenary Session II: Meeting the Goals of the National HIV/AIDS Strategy and the National HIV/AIDS Strategy Implementation Plan

(3-005)  Plenary Session II

Meeting the goals of the National HIV/AIDS Strategy and the National HIV/AIDS Strategy Implementation Plan

Chairs: Guillermo J. Prado, PhD, Associate Professor and Director, Division of Prevention Science and Community Health, Miller School of Medicine, University of Miami and Richard Jenkins, PhD, Health Scientist Administrator, Prevention Research Branch, National Institute on Drug Abuse

Presenters: Grant Colfax, MD, Special Assistant to the President and Director of the White House Office of National AIDS Policy,  Moupali Das, MD, MPH, Assistant Clinical Professor, Division of HIV/AIDS and Infectious Diseases, SFGH, University of California, San Francisco, Director of Implementation Science and Evaluation Research, HIV Prevention Section, San Francisco Department of Public Health, Steffanie A. Strathdee, PhD, Associate Dean of Global Health Sciences, University of California San Diego
(Regrettably Gregorio Millett is unable to present in San Francisco. Dr. Moupali Das will be presenting.)

The incidence and prevalence of HIV/AIDS globally remains unacceptably high despite many scientific breakthroughs (both domestically and internationally), and disproportionately high in high-risk populations (e.g., men who have sex with men, transgender persons, minorities, youth, people who use drugs, and undocumented migrants).  The National HIV/AIDS Strategy’s three primary aims are to: reduce HIV incidence, increase access to care and optimize health outcomes, and reduce HIV-related health disparities.  The three panelist as part of this plenary will discuss 1) the policy underpinnings of the National HIV/ADS Strategy, 2) the research underpinnings of the National HIV/AIDS Strategy, and 3) how lessons learned from international research can help inform the response to the National HIV/AIDS Strategy. 

Policy Underpinning the National HIV/AIDS Strategy

Presenter: Grant Colfax, MD

The White House Office of National HIV/ AIDS Policy oversees the Administration’s domestic HIV efforts. Since the release of the President’s National HIV/AIDS Strategy in 2010, efforts have focused on aligning resources with the epidemic, scaling up evidence-based interventions, and streamlining data collection to monitor outcomes.  This talk will focus on policies and initiatives that are crucial to realizing the goals of the National HIV/AIDS Strategy.

Grant Colfax, MD, is the Special Assistant to the President and Director of the White House Office of National Aids Policy. Prior to joining the ONAP he served as Director of the HIV Prevention Section in the San Francisco Department of Public Health. Dr. Colfax is a graduate of Harvard Medical School and completed his medical residency at the University of California, San Francisco. His work focuses on collaborating with community stakeholders to implement sustainable, evidence-based HIV prevention and treatment interventions and policies in public health settings and measuring their effectiveness. Under his leadership, San Francisco greatly expanded HIV testing and treatment support efforts. Until assuming his ONAP role, Dr. Colfax was also an NIH- and CDC supported scientist studying HIV testing strategies, clinical trials of medications to treat substance dependence, and biomedical HIV prevention interventions. Dr. Colfax was a practicing clinician at the Positive Health Program, San Francisco’s premier public HIV clinic

San Francisco HIV/AIDS Strategy: An Implementation Science Approach to Measuring and Maxiziming Outcomes Along the Cascade of Care

Presenter: Moupali Das, MD, MPH

Moupali Das, MD, MPH, is an Assistant Clinical Professor, Divisions of HIV/AIDS and Infectious Diseases, SFGH, University of California, San Francisco, and is Director of Implementation Science and Evaluation Research, HIV Prevention Section, San Francisco Department of Public Health. Dr. Das is a board certified Infectious Disease clinician/HIV specialist with research expertise in community viral load, implementation science, medication adherence, and substance use and HIV prevention. She has co-authored a key modeling study using San Francisco’s surveillance data to evaluate the effect of expanding access to antiretroviral therapy on the HIV epidemic among MSM. Dr. Das has developed a novel population-based biologic indicator, community viral load (CVL), for monitoring the HIV epidemic prevention and control. Her manuscript on community viral load (Das, PLoS One 2010) has been cited as the basis for measuring community viral load in President Barack Obama’s National HIV/AIDS Strategy (NHAS) and provides the framework for the NHAS recommendation that CVL be used as an outcome measure to evaluate the effectiveness of the strategy. Dr. Das has examined disparities in CVL, particularly among substance users, as well as the relationship between community viral load and new HIV infections.

Several of Dr. Das’s current grants include Site PI on a NIH/NIDA grant Project HOPE: Hospital Visit as an Opportunity for Prevention and Engagement; Co-I on an HRSA grant Systems Linkage and Access to Care Evaluation and Technical Assistance Center; and Co-I on an NIH grant Novel Evaluation Methods for Multi-Level/Combination HIV Prevention Interventions.

Dr. Das received her BA from Harvard College and her MD from Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgery in 2001.  She has held University of California, San Francisco, Fellowships in infectious diseases (2005-2007) and AIDS prevention studies (2006-2007). She received her MPH in epidemiology from the University of California, Berkeley in 2007.

How Lessons from the Global South can Inform the Response to the US National AIDS Strategy

Presenter: Steffanie A. Strathdee, PhD

Vulnerability to HIV infection is influenced by various types of contextual factors (i.e., physical, social, economic, policy) in the risk environment that operate at multiple levels (i.e., macro and micro).  This presentation will primarily focus on HIV prevention interventions among injection drug users and female sex workers from lower and middle income countries.  Results of these case studies are consistent with international literature that supports the efficacy of integrated approaches to prevention that combine sexual risk reduction, condom promotion and improved access to treatment for HIV/STIs and drug abuse in the context of structural interventions (e.g, policy changes, harm reduction and community empowerment).  Additionally, HIV prevention interventions need to incorporate ‘upstream’ factors that target the antecedents of vulnerability, rather than continuing to place undue emphasis on individuals for their behaviors. Ways in which these lessons can inform the implementation of the U.S National AIDS Strategy are discussed, with special attention to underserved subpopulations (e.g., undocumented migrants).

Steffanie A. Strathdee, PhD, is the Associate Dean of Global Health Sciences, Harold Simon Professor and Chief of the Division of Global Public Health in the Department of Medicine at the University of California San Diego School of Medicine. She is also an Adjunct Professor at the Johns Hopkins University. Dr. Strathdee is an infectious disease epidemiologist who has spent the last two decades focusing on HIV prevention in underserved, marginalized populations in developed and developing countries, including injection drug users, men having sex with men, and sex workers. In the last decade, she has published over 445 peer-reviewed publications on HIV prevention and the natural history of HIV and related infections and the evaluation of interventions to reduce harms among substance using populations. Currently, she is engaged in a number of HIV/STI prevention projects in international settings including Mexico, India, Canada and Afghanistan. She also leads three NIH-funded studies of HIV risk behaviors among drug users and sex workers on the Mexico-US border, one of which is funded through 2020 by a MERIT award granted by the National Institute on Drug Abuse. She directs a Fogarty-funded AIDS Training Program between academic institutions in San Diego and Tijuana. Dr. Strathdee also directs the UCSD Global Health Initiative and was the founding co-director of the UC Global Health Institute’s Center for Migration and Health.