December 22, 2006

Dear Friend of AVAC,

As AVAC celebrates its 11th birthday this month, we are reminded that the need for an AIDS vaccine remains as urgent as ever. To that end, we have expanded this year – adding three new staff members and many new and exciting projects! Thanks to increasing support from our donors, members, friends and partners, 2006 has been busy:

• In May, we launched the AIDS Vaccine Clearinghouse (www.aidsvaccineclearinghouse.org), a virtual gateway to information and a link to other people and organizations concerned about AIDS vaccine research, policy, advocacy, global delivery and community involvement. It offers original content, links to helpful resources and accurate, up-to-date information from other sources. Web traffic has been great, and we will expand the site further in the coming year!

• Along with the Clearinghouse, we also introduced the Advocates’ Network, an electronic list serve that provides members with regular email announcements, updates and notices of events related to HIV vaccine and prevention research around the world. The Network now has over 400 members from over 25 different countries! If you’d like to receive these updates, please e-mail advocates_network@avac.org.

• Our annual report of the field, AIDS Vaccines: The Next Frontiers,was launched at this year’s AIDS Vaccine Conference in Amsterdam. The report offers our first contribution to the scenario planning that we think is critical to the success of the field. The Next Frontiers maps the issues, challenges and steps needed to ensure that research on vaccines and other new prevention technologies proceeds swiftly around the world.

• Following on our special report last year, Will A Pill A Day Prevent HIV?, we continue to monitor the pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) trials on a new and comprehensive website, www.prepwatch.org. Also, look for an update to last year’s report in the first quarter of 2007!

• In August, we joined thousands of other advocates, researchers, policymakers and community members at the XVI International AIDS Conference in Toronto, Canada. The conference was a great opportunity to broaden our global coalition and spread our message through numerous presentations, AVAC-sponsored satellite sessions, skills building workshops and our collaborative booth, “Partners in Prevention Research Advocacy”, in conjunction with the African Microbicide Advocacy Group, the Global Campaign for Microbicides, and the Nigerian HIV Vaccine and Microbicide Advocacy Group.

• Since the premier last World AIDS Day of the PBS documentary, Ending AIDS: The Search for an AIDS Vaccine, we have launched a companion website at www.endingaids.org and developed a discussion guide to accompany the DVD to assist community groups and AIDS service organizations to use the video as an educational and mobilizing tool. If you’re interested in hosting a screening for friends and colleagues, please let us know!

• In January, AVAC was selected to be secretariat of the HIV Vaccines and Microbicide Resource Tracking Working Group, a partnership among UNAIDS, AVAC, the Alliance for Microbicide Development and the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative. The group publishes annual investment and expenditure data, and this year we created a centralized website at www.hivresourcetracking.org for this data, the published reports and presentations.

• In October we convened a symposium with Brooklyn Law School, Advancing Vaccines: Innovations in Intellectual Property Practice. The panel featured numerous experts who discussed novel legal mechanisms for IP sharing in research, and provided us with an important venue to consider how we might better use intellectual property to accelerate vaccine development.

• In February we collaborated with the World Health Organization and the African AIDS Vaccine Programme on a consultation on inclusion of adolescents in HIV vaccine clinical trials, and we subsequently convened a small consultation to discuss potential approval processes for adolescent and infant trials of HIV vaccines in the US.

• Earlier this year, we convened our first scientific roundtable to discuss critical issues in science, vaccine development and clinical trials. The discussion of critical issues in science and research is essential to inform our advocacy work. Plans are now in place to expand these discussions to international sites in the new year.

If you have any questions about the year past, or our plans for 2007, please do be in touch. We rely on people like you to help shape our strategies and we hope that you will consider joining AVAC this year so that we can sustain and expand our global advocacy.

AVAC’s achievements in 2006 – and over the past 11 years – could not have happened without the commitment and support of our donors and Members. Visit www.avac.org/join.htm to contribute (and to get more information on how you can give a gift membership this holiday season).

Many thanks in advance for your support, and we wish you a wonderful New Year,

Mitchell Warren
Executive Director