Working Committee on HIV Prevention

This program is no longer active.
As part of the CSIS HIV/AIDS Task Force’s activities, the Working Committee on HIV Prevention (WCP) was chaired by Phillip Nieburg, senior associate at CSIS and previously with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and Jennifer Kates, Vice President of and director of HIV Policy at the Kaiser Family Foundation.

The WCP was formed to address a concern that HIV prevention itself is “at risk”, and that risk appears to be increasing. This increasing risk is probably due to several interrelated factors:
  • HIV prevention services have been and continue to be under-funded;
  • An ideological gridlock surrounds prevention in Washington and elsewhere, rendering most discussions of prevention polarized and stuck;
  • Many misconceptions about prevention remain, including about what works, how prevention services get delivered, and the cost-effectiveness of prevention; and
  • Worldwide attention to HIV/AIDS has largely shifted to treatment access, often at the expense of prevention.
A reduced or polarized focus on prevention has serious implications for the success of global HIV/AIDS strategies and programs, including the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), in stemming the tide of the pandemic in currently hard hit and “next wave” countries.  Indeed, the long term success of efforts to expand treatment access is largely dependent on a scaled-up approach to prevention.

The purpose of the WCP, therefore, was to facilitate a bi-partisan discussion of global HIV prevention policy among key U.S. stakeholders to strengthen current U.S. government activities and forge additional common ground. It sought to translate the large body of literature on HIV prevention science and on-the-ground experience into practical and strategic lessons for U.S. policymakers. In particular, the WCP drew upon and coordinated with the work of the Global HIV Prevention Working Group (PWG), a panel of nearly 50 leading public health experts, clinicians, biomedical, and behavioral researchers, and people affected by HIV/AIDS, convened by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Kaiser Family Foundation.  The PWG’s reports addressed many of the critical and cutting edge issues in HIV prevention today and offer numerous lessons and examples for U.S. policy moving forward.

Participation


The WCP, which has included participation from congressional and administration staff, HIV prevention science experts, foreign policy experts, and representatives of community and faith-based organizations, explored HIV prevention issues with an objective of informing both current U.S. policy on global HIV/AIDS prevention and upcoming Congressional consideration of PEPFAR reauthorization.
 

Briefings and Discussions

The WCP convened an ongoing series of briefings to explore both technical and policy aspects of various HIV prevention issues that could ultimately affect the success of the U.S. government’s global HIV/AIDS control activities.  Many of these issues are politically as well as technically complex.  Briefings sought to include representation from the U.S. Office of the Global AIDS Coordinator and/or other relevant USG agencies as well as other experts in the field where possible. The overall goal of the briefings was to address, over time, the panoply of important HIV prevention topics facing the USG in its HIV prevention responses.
 

Publications

The committee's most recent publication provides an analysis of prevention efforts through PEPFAR and policy opions for enhancing HIV prevention in the reauthorization process:

"Making HIV Prevention Paramount in the Next Phase of the U.S. Global HIV/AIDS Response"
Jennifer Kates, J. Stephen Morrison, Phillip Nieburg

"HIV Prevention in Complex, Macro-Scale Societies"
by Jennifer Kates and Phillip Nieburg

"Global health funding: a glass half full?"
The Lancet
Jennifer Kates, J. Stephen Morrison, and Eric Lief

Former Programs