USAID Marks HIV Vaccine Awareness Day
How HIV Vaccine Advocacy Can Leverage Lessons from COVID-19
This HIV Vaccine Awareness Day — May 18 — marks 24 years since President Bill Clinton committed the United States to develop an AIDS vaccine. For 20 of those years, since 2001, USAID has supported partners at the forefront of global efforts to design, develop, and test various candidate HIV vaccines.
A challenging, often uphill battle, these endeavors have resulted in numerous payoffs — including deep insights into human immunology and vaccine design that have irrefutably contributed to the speed at which scientists have developed COVID-19 vaccines.
Lessons from HIV vaccine research and development (R&D) are being leveraged at a remarkably rapid pace by countless scientists who have shifted their focus toward vaccines to protect against the novel coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2.
However, as many have sharply pivoted to COVID-19, droves of devoted clinicians, scientists, and HIV prevention advocates, communicators, and policymakers have maintained a keen focus on their efforts to discover new approaches to a safe and effective, preventive HIV vaccine. USAID supports these advocates, communicators, and policymakers through AVAC’s Coalition to Accelerate & Support Prevention Research (CASPR). CASPR is a set of partnerships and activities that is African-centered and -led, and focused on advocacy for HIV biomedical interventions — including an HIV vaccine — from research to rollout.
In recognition of HIV Vaccine Awareness Day, USAID’s HIV vaccine experts engaged with their CASPR counterparts to ask how the evolving COVID-19 pandemic has affected HIV prevention research advocates, and what lessons learned from COVID-19 vaccine R&D could be applied to HIV vaccine R&D. Here’s what we found out.
Hope amidst tragedy
The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in a historic loss of human life, social disruption, and economic instability. More than a year in, it’s hard to find a silver lining — a semblance of hope — about the way forward when so many people and countries have experienced and continue to experience tragedy and hardship. Describing the current pandemic’s impact on HIV vaccine advocacy as a “double-edged sword,” advocates have found such hope in the recent increased attention on vaccines.
On the one hand, with attention shifted from HIV vaccine R&D toward rapidly developing effective COVID-19 vaccines, it has been difficult drawing and maintaining the attention of policymakers, who are naturally laser-focused on ending the COVID-19 pandemic. On the other, never before have vaccines been situated so squarely at the center of global discourse.
Vaccine conversations have become more accessible than ever. As COVID-19 vaccines dominate the media, terms such as “antibodies” and “immunity” have become commonplace.
Media coverage has made the work that HIV vaccine R&D communicators and advocates do to build vaccine knowledge and literacy in communities easier. The need to continue this work has also been gravely underscored by resistance among various communities to receive COVID-19 vaccines. Vaccine hesitancy has become increasingly important across the world; COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy has served as a reminder to HIV prevention research advocates to continue to examine and understand psychosocial barriers to vaccine uptake.
Opportunities and lessons in ethics
On the heels of the Joint United Nations Program on HIV and AIDS’ and the World Health Organization’s updated guidance, advocates also made timely observations related to ethics. First, an opportunity: the global scientific response to COVID-19 has strengthened communication and collaboration between research ethics committees, resulting in energy that advocates hope to leverage. However, the COVID-19 crisis has also shed light on inequities in post-trial access to vaccines.
Many countries, especially low- and middle-income countries, have been “left behind in terms of equitable access to COVID-19 tools and technologies,” one advocate noted. Just as HIV vaccine R&D has informed the scientific response to COVID-19, the HIV prevention research community must also allow lessons from COVID-19 around ethics, equitable access, and community engagement to inform HIV vaccine R&D.
Keeping HIV at the center of the work
Witnessing the rapid development of COVID-19 vaccines has given communities hope. Communities are asking advocates, “When can we get the HIV vaccine?” with an urgency that underscores the importance of keeping HIV at the center of the work. Fortuitously, the release of some positive results for the novel G001 HIV vaccine candidate coincided with this season, further instilling “hope in the fact that an HIV vaccine is possible,” one advocate observed.
But there are barriers. Advocates echoed what Mitchell Warren, AVAC executive director, wrote in his recent blog: scientific challenges aside, HIV vaccine efforts have not received the same level of funding, support for funding, or scientific collaboration as has been seen for COVID-19 vaccines. Paraphrasing Warren, the world is well-positioned to develop an HIV vaccine if the HIV research effort can leverage lessons from the COVID-19 experience just as the COVID-19 response built on HIV.
Finding an HIV vaccine takes a village. In addition to the resilient advocates like those in CASPR, on this HIV Vaccine Awareness Day, USAID thanks the many volunteers, community members, health professionals, and scientists working toward developing a safe and effective preventive HIV vaccine capable of durable and sustained epidemic control.
About the Authors
Ashley C. Lima is a Health Science Specialist in the Research Division of USAID’s Office of HIV & AIDS. Margaret M. McCluskey is the Senior Technical Advisor for HIV Vaccines in the same office.
