Developing Models of HIV Prevention Advocacy For Whom and How – Partnerships in Prevention Jim Pickett, IRMA & AIDS Foundation of Chicago Microbicides.

Developing Models of HIV Prevention Advocacy

For Whom and How – Partnerships in Prevention

Jim Pickett, IRMA & AIDS Foundation of ChicagoMicrobicides 2010 - Pittsburgh May 23, 2010

The recipe for success IRMA as a

“model”

Here we go

Background

• Long history of treatment advocacy• To date - prevention advocacy has focused on:– Male and female condoms– VCT– Clean needles– Behaviour change– MTCT– Male circumcision

• Advocacy around NPT is in its adolescence

Method to the madness

• Informal e-mail and telephone interviews with NPT advocacy leaders– Successes– Challenges– What do you do best?– How might another group incorporate your best?– What is the thing you need to work on?– If I could do it all over again, ____________________

Who did I talk to?

• Manju Chatani – AMAG [African Microbicides Advocacy Group]

• Anna Forbes – formerly GCM [Global Campaign for Microbicides]

• Morenike Ukpong – NHVMAS [New HIV Vaccine and Microbicide Advocacy Society]

• Mitchell Warren – AVAC [AVAC - Global Advocacy for HIV Prevention]

Pearls of wisdom

Themes

Passion

Purpose

Strategy

CreativityVision

Strength

Mentor

Don’t fall in love with “your” technology

The competition is the virus, not other technologies.

The goal is to prevent new

infections and end the epidemic.

Be passionate

Advocacy without passion is

just special-interest politicking.

Advocates are born with a fire in the belly.

- Mitchell Warren

Fill a gap

There was a gap identified for

African leadership in advocacy and a

need for a platform to mobilize

African advocates and interested orgs. We

started AMAG with the goal to link community

advocates, but at

the launch mtg, half the room was filled

with African researchers who wanted to take

part.

- Manju Chatani

Have a mission

In 1998, when GCM was founded, no woman-initiated HIV prevention tools existed with the exception of the female condom … There was virtually no awareness among scientists, policy-makers, the general public or even among HIV/AIDS advocates of the need ... We formed GCM to create… demand for woman-initiated HIV prevention tools, to raise public funding… inspire the scientific community to take on the research challenges, and build understanding among policy makers….

- Anna Forbes

Facilitate, collaborate

We have done much to facilitate relationships and partnerships between African advocates and researchers… - Manju Chatani

Do your work in coalition, in collaboration, with unusual suspects. - Mitchell Warren

Create partnershipsI personally crave to see more empowering collaborations with

other organisations in the field. I desire this and wish to see such successful models -

where the partners all bring things to the table

as equals.

- Morenike Ukpong

Herd the cats

We chose to form an inclusive movement by engaging women's health advocates, gay men's health advocates, HIV/AIDS

activists, and international development organizations through their own specific

interest in microbicides.

- Anna Forbes

Halfway home

Great advocacy models

understand how they

integrate into the larger

discourse.

communities to scientists and back.

-

- Mitchell Warren

We connect the dots on a wide range of disparate issues,

and translate them to various audiences,

Connect the dots

It’s not just the money, honey

Prevention research has often been boiled down to "we need more money" - but lots of things are not about just money . We need to be more sophisticated and move from cheerleading advocacy to more strategic, more critical thinking, from clinical trial results to public health impacts, to evidence-based analysis.

- Mitchell Warren

But… where IS the money honey?

Funding has been the primary challenge. It

has stunted our growth and our

capacity to do the work we have envisioned and endorsed by our

constituents to do. – Manju Chatani

Getting funding support is EXTREMELY difficult and so we have to be EXTREMELY

imaginative. – Morenike Ukpong

GCM's approach has been to "lead

from behind" and to avert conflict and

competition by anticipating potential

areas of tension and addressing them

proactively... The creation of IRMA, of

course, is our most successful example

of this approach.

- Anna Forbes

Strategic mentoring

We currently are developing a 18 months mentorship plan with a Spanish organisation who is great with government advocacy. They will learn about community mobilisation including media engagement from NHVMAS – a great model for learning. NHVMAS learned a lot from GCM in its early years

- Morenike Ukpong

Challenges

Managing expectations of local and national NGOs who we have gotten excited by HIV prevention research,

especially microbicides – only to have them fatigued by the series of products in trials that did not show promise.

Supporting NGOs and community reps in keeping prevention research advocacy alongside the more pressing issues around

HIV stigma, treatment and care issues.

Keeping up to speed – and keeping advocates up to speed – on the rapidly changing science of prevention research.

- Manju Chatani

Is there really a recipe for success?

A pinch of this a splash of that

IRMA, b.2005

4 people, 3 agencies, 2 countries

Roll with it, make it up

• Communications– Listserv– Teleconferences– Website, blog, other

social networking– Reports

• Activities– Conferences

• M2006, AIDS 2006, etc

– Lubricant survey

Become a publisher

Play well with other acronyms

• Collaborations– AMAG, AMD, amfAR, AVAC,

CHAMP, GCM, GMHS, GNP+ MSMGF, MTN, NHVMAS, PC, UCLA, + dozens and dozens more advocacy groups, universities, research institutions

– IRMA ALC, IRMA Nigeria• Governance– TOR– Steering Committee

The forest for the trees

• Connection to broader issues– Lack of data on

heterosexual AI– Stigma, taboo– Homophobia,

criminalization– Gender inequities– Human rights, LGBT rights– Current HIV prevention and

NPT writ large

Special thanks to IRMA funders

• AIDS Foundation of Chicago• amfAR – The Foundation for AIDS Research• Broadway CARES /Equity Fights AIDS• Elton John AIDS Foundation

And that’s it

[email protected]

www.rectalmicrobicides.org

Thank you