What Will It Take to Finish the Fight Against HIV?
About the session
The tools to prevent and treat HIV have advanced enormously. But whether those tools reach the people who need them most still depends on something much more fundamental: strong health systems, sustainable financing and trusted community organisations.
For adolescent girls, sex workers and other marginalised communities, HIV does not exist in isolation. It intersects with unintended pregnancy, gender-based violence, poverty, stigma and discriminatory laws and policies. Responses built around a single disease or service can miss the realities shaping whether someone can access care and stay connected to it.
The next phase of the HIV response therefore requires both new tools and different systems around them. Next-generation prevention, including long-acting PrEP, creates major opportunities, but uptake will depend on community mobilisation and trust. Integrated HIV, sexual and reproductive health and GBV services can create more connected pathways to care. Community-based organisations and peer mobilisers remain essential to reaching people formal systems often do not.
Financing is part of the challenge. As traditional donor funding comes under pressure, what will it take to move toward greater domestic investment while using philanthropy strategically to scale proven approaches and crowd in public resources? And how do we ensure that community-led organisations retain real influence over the decisions that affect them?
Discussion Group Leaders
Melodie KG is Co-Director at New Moon Network, advancing funding and capacity building for the sex workers’ rights movement in the United States.
Nadia Kist is Executive Director at Blood:Water, advancing African-led solutions to health disparities at the intersection of HIV and safe water, sanitation, and hygiene.
Serah Malaba is Co-CEO at Tiko, advancing sustainable health systems that expand adolescent girls’ access to HIV, contraception, and sexual violence services across sub-Saharan Africa.
What to expect
A practical conversation about what comes next for HIV prevention and care, connecting new prevention tools with community mobilisation, integrated services, sustainable financing and stronger health systems.
Participants will examine what has been learned from models that have already reached large numbers of girls and marginalised communities, and what governments, philanthropy, health systems and community organisations need to do differently to take those approaches further.
Who This Is For
This session is for HIV and global health leaders, governments, funders, community-based organisations, advocates, researchers and practitioners working to expand prevention and care for adolescent girls, sex workers and other communities disproportionately affected by HIV.
What You Will Get Out of It
Insights into reaching adolescent girls and marginalised communities with the next generation of HIV prevention
Lessons from integrating HIV, SRH and GBV services rather than treating them in isolation
Approaches to strengthening community organisations, peer mobilisers and community accountability
Perspectives on domestic financing, philanthropic capital and government co-financing for HIV
Practical lessons from taking proven community-based models to scale