Pre-conferences

The 12th Symposium builds on over a decade of meetings dedicated to the health and wellbeing of children and adolescents born HIV-free to women living with HIV, an estimated global population of nearly 16 million. Evidence indicates that these children face a higher likelihood of infectious diseases, mortality, impaired growth and suboptimal neurodevelopmental and cognitive outcomes.

Under the theme “Learning from successes and challenges of other paediatric programs to optimize outcomes of children and adolescents with perinatal HIV exposure,” the Symposium presents the latest scientific evidence regarding the health and wellbeing of this population. The goal is to inform policy and programming while fostering connections among early-career researchers, policymakers and program staff. Beyond its scientific focus, the Symposium serves as a vital advocacy platform where families affected by HIV share their lived experiences and advocate for improved outcomes for these children and ado"

Accelerating HIV prevention requires translating scientific innovation into real-world impact. This pre-conference will highlight advances across basic, translational, clinical, and implementation science, while addressing pathways to equitable delivery.

Recent breakthroughs are expanding prevention options: monthly oral and six-monthly injectable PrEP, next-generation broadly neutralizing antibodies, mRNA platforms, and germline-targeting strategies are reshaping the field. The FDA and EU approvals of lenacapavir mark a milestone. Yet impact depends on affordability, accessibility, and scale, particularly in low- and middle-income settings.

Bringing together researchers, implementers, policymakers, and communities, this pre-conference will assess the state of HIV prevention science, identify research and implementation gaps, define priorities for next-generation prevention tools and explore how discoveries can be translated into practical, equitable and scalable impact.

The pre-conference will strengthen community and clinical understanding of HIV cure research priorities. It will engage regional and international scientific experts and discuss key areas of HIV cure science, including understanding the HIV reservoir and mechanisms of viral control, monitoring post-treatment and intervention control, strategies to target the virus, advances in immunotherapy and gene therapy, and specific considerations for paediatric HIV cure research.Leveraging the conference’s location in Latin America and the Caribbean, the programme will showcase research conducted on the region, bringing together leading cure researchers and clinicians, community members, advocates and research participants.

The programme will address the specific needs and priorities of HIV cure research in Latin America and the Caribbean, aiming to strengthen engagement and support the advancement of HIV cure research in the region and foster South-South collaboration.

The global HIV response is at a critical juncture. For much of the last decade, HIV treatment was treated as settled — largely assumed to be affordable, accessible, and principally resolved. Today, that assumption is unraveling. Treatment is entering a new phase, shaped by shrinking donor funding, intellectual property barriers, unequal rollout of long-acting technologies, and health systems under pressure. These shifts raise urgent questions about who decides how innovation is used, who benefits, and whose voices shape the response.

This moment carries a troubling echo of the early 2000s, when treatment was pitted against prevention in a false choice that communities fought hard to reject. Two decades later, as funding contracts and long-acting prevention technologies dominate the headlines, the question of where a shrinking dollar goes is being asked again — and treatment is losing ground. The community movements that built the case for universal access in the 2000s must be rebuilt and resourced now, with the same clarity: prevention and treatment are not competing priorities. A response that abandons one to fund the other will fail both.

Alongside these shifts, the way communities connect, organize, access information, and seek care is also changing. For LGBTQ+ communities, key populations, and people living with HIV, digital platforms have become central to how people build networks, access health information, navigate stigma, and engage with prevention and treatment services. These platforms are no longer peripheral; they are part of the infrastructure of contemporary community life. Increasingly, they are also the surface on which AI systems, algorithmic decision-making, and new forms of surveillance are being built, often without community input, and often on data that communities generated.This moment is a crossroads. Innovation and digital transformation can reinforce existing inequalities, or communities can help shape the technologies, platforms, and systems that increasingly determine access. The difference between these two futures depends on who holds power: who designs the tools, who governs the data, whose knowledge counts as evidence, and whose leadership is resourced.

In an era of profound transition for the global health architecture, this pre-conference stands as a high-level forum for strategic foresight and collective action. Organized by IPPF and Gestos, it arrives at a critical juncture, convening amidst pivotal dialogues regarding the institutional evolution of the AIDS response within the multilateral system.As international cooperation paradigms shift and challenges to sustain the human rights-based approaches intensify, participants will contribute to a roadmap that prioritizes SRHR/HIV integration and community-led responses as the pillars of a resilient future.Throughout the program, each theme will be anchored by a distinguished assembly of high-level authorities, global decision-makers, and prominent community voices. Together, we will navigate the transition of global health governance that directly affects people’s lives and communities, so institutional reforms can serve as a safeguard for human rights and for fully funded AIDS response.

Despite strong commitments and updated normative guidance, HIV, syphilis, and hepatitis B remain leading causes of preventable stillbirths and child mortality, driven by fragmented delivery approaches. As countries rebuild HIV responses and pursue 2030 health goals in an era of constrained financing, people-first integrated platforms are essential.

Pregnancy, childbirth, and the postpartum period presents a key opportunity to accelerate EVT while advancing the broader health and well-being of women and their families. This pre-conference will convene governments, community organizations, normative agencies, implementers, and the private sector to envision how integrated disease management throughout the peripartum period can drive progress toward triple elimination and universal health coverage goals.

Through expert presentations and interactive panels, this session will: 1) outline opportunities for bundled care across the antenatal to postnatal care continuum—looking beyond HIV.

In alignment with the America First Global Health Strategy, the U.S. government is finalizing new bilateral memorandums of understanding (MOUs) and implementation plans with partner countries. These agreements mark a pivotal shift toward country ownership, sustainability, and more efficient use of resources as countries accelerate progress toward self-reliance in their HIV responses.

This half-day pre-conference session will examine the status of the MOUs and implementation plans, followed by a discussion with Ministries of Health, implementing partners, and other stakeholders. The conversation will identify critical enablers, risks, and practical considerations for sustaining impact, strengthening integration, and advancing a clear, actionable path toward country‑led health programming. 

This event will bring together a diversity of voices of women living with HIV from around the world as well as international experts to focus upon the issues affecting women living with HIV in relation to prevention, treatment, care and quality of life. Topics will range from sexual and reproductive health and rights, criminalization, stigma and other topics affecting women living with HIV both globally and in the Latin American and Caribbean region. "Women Know What Works" is not just a call to action, it is a reminder to the global community that women are at the centre of the global HIV and AIDS response – it is time to be heard, time to be recognised, because women know what works.