Translating the science and capacity building
The IAS Educational Fund aims to provide educational and training opportunities to frontline HIV professionals. In its third year, this essential programme of the IAS is continuing to receive growing support and has undergone exciting new developments.
Further to growing demand and through feedback received from HIV professionals during activities implemented by the programme since 2016 (scholarships, regional meetings and online resources), the IAS Educational Fund launched three new initiatives this year: scientific publishing workshops; a series of webinars; and a new press fellowship programme.
1. In Ghana and Zimbabwe, the IAS Educational Fund implemented scientific publishing workshops to support local scientists to improve their ability to compete successfully for acceptance of their abstracts at international conferences and publish their research findings in international peer-reviewed journals. Drawing on the expertise in academic publishing available through the Journal of the International AIDS Society (JIAS), these new in-country workshops were aimed at linking local and regional science back into global scientific debates.
2. In 2019, the IAS Educational Fund also launched a new press fellowship programme in Ghana and Zimbabwe with the aim of advancing on-the-ground media coverage of key HIV-related science, research and implementation. Journalists from local, regional and international media outlets were exposed to the latest HIV science and the way it is contextualized in each country to strengthen their ability to inform a broader public of the latest advances in prevention, treatment and care of HIV and co-infections. The IAS drew on its experience with media scholarships from AIDS conferences to implement this new initiative.
3. In addition, the IAS also made scientific content available to HIV professionals through new webinars. These online sessions of similar content to the in-person meetings provided space for continuous capacity building, including debriefing the latest scientific advances from AIDS 2018, and scientific publishing support in collaboration with JIAS. Online sessions to follow up in-country meetings took place in Morocco and Thailand in 2017; these also provided an avenue to exchange practical examples of having translated science into concrete activities on the ground, and continue to discuss achievements, challenges, possible solutions and further action.
The IAS Educational Fund continued to offer fellowship opportunities. It also continued to make dynamic, scientific fora accessible to HIV professionals by providing direct support to clinicians and other HIV service providers to attend our global conferences and by providing subtitles in several languages for the content of selected AIDS 2018 sessions.
In addition, the IAS Educational Fund increasingly worked to connect new international research and practice with local contexts with regional meetings targeted at healthcare workers, advocates and policy makers to provide access to the latest science and opportunities to question how that information impacts local epidemics.
PORT–AU–PRINCE, HAITI
TITLE: Science and Community in the HIV Response in the Caribbean
DATE: 28-29 November 2018
PARTNER ORGANIZATION: Les Centres GHESKIO
BEIRUT, LEBANON
TITLE: Translating HIV Science into practice in the MENA region
DATE: 28-30 June 2019
PARTNER ORGANIZATION: American University of Beirut
TBILISI, GEORGIA
TITLE: Translating Science to End HIV in Eastern Europe and Central Asia
DATE: 20 June 2019
PARTNER ORGANIZATION: Center for Information and Counseling on Reproductive Health – TANADGOMA
JAKARTA, INDONESIA
TITLE: Test and Treat: Innovative Ways Forward
DATE: 8-9 December 2018
PARTNER ORGANIZATION: Indonesia AIDS Coalition
BOGOTÁ, COLOMBIA
TITLE: Responses to HIV and Migration in Latin America: Current Challenges and Future Strategies
DATE: 3 April 2019
PARTNER ORGANIZATION: Viral Infections Latin America (VILA) and the Latin American HIV Workshop Study Group
ACCRA, GHANA
TITLE: Science and Community in the Response to HIV in Western Africa
DATE: 12-13 May 2019
PARTNER ORGANIZATION: Planned Parenthood Association of Ghana
EZULWINI, KINGDOM OF ESWATINI
TITLE: Science, Community and Youth in the HIV Response in Southern Africa
DATE: 26-27 March 2019
PARTNER ORGANIZATION: National Emergency Response Council on HIV and AIDS
HARARE, ZIMBABWE
TITLE: Translating Science to End HIV in Southern Africa
DATE: 24 June 2019
PARTNER ORGANIZATION: Africaid Zvandiri