On November 5-6 2017, the second ‘All Africa’ meeting of the NIH funded IeDEA network (www.iedea.org)* will convene approximately 150 investigators from sub-Saharan African (SSA), the US, France, and Switzerland to share knowledge and methods, and strengthen collaborations to develop a research approach to optimize the implementation of universal testing and treatment (UTT) for HIV in the region. A true paradigm shift in HIV care and treatment, UTT—or ‘Treat All’—represents an important strategy for SSA, which has the highest rates of HIV incidence and mortality and the greatest numbers of people living with undiagnosed and untreated HIV infection.
The IeDEA network includes data from 140 clinics in 23 countries in SSA, representing >1,000,000 patients, many of whom have not yet initiated HIV treatment and is providing some of the first data on the uptake and outcomes of the test and treat approach in the real world and at scale. While most SSA countries have adopted some form of WHO’s Treat All recommendation, rigorous research to assess outcomes of this new and ambitious effort (including its uptake and impact) is critical at this stage, along with research to identify and address major bottlenecks impeding effective implementation. The IeDEA All Africa meeting will bring together researchers and thought leaders from across the continent to forge consensus around research priorities that will help advance Treat All implementation in the region. The objectives of this meeting are:
- To bring together IeDEA Africa regional researchers (within and across sub-Saharan African regions) to share knowledge and identify new areas of collaboration around Treat All implementation.
- To identify knowledge gaps by exploring and exposing IeDEA researchers to the ways that the Treat All approach is being rolled out in Rwanda and other settings in sub-Saharan Africa.
- To develop and disseminate a consensus statement regarding Treat All research priorities, metrics, and methodologic approaches to guide IeDEA’s research agenda for the next 4 years.
A preliminary agenda for the meeting is as follows:
All-Africa IeDEA meeting: Identifying research priorities and knowledge gaps for Treat All in sub-Saharan Africa
November 5
- Welcome and introduction to IeDEA
- Keynote addresses: Speakers TBA
- Presentation of Consensus Statement draft
- Panel of high-level discussants from Rwanda and 1-2 other Treat All countries
- Working group sessions to refine Consensus Statement draft
November 6
- Reports from Working Group moderators
- Panel sessions on Service Integration and Key Populations and Treat All implementation
- Panel on leveraging external data sources in multi-level analyses related to Treat All
- Closing speaker: Speaker TBA
* IeDEA is an international research consortium established in 2005 by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) to provide a rich resource for globally diverse HIV/AIDS data. IeDEA is a trans-NIH initiative that collaborates with the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), the National Cancer Institute (NCI), the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), and the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA). Sites in various regions throughout the world collaborate to collect and define key variables, and implement methodology to effectively analyze data as a cost-effective means of generating large data sets to address the high priority HIV/AIDS research questions that are unanswerable by a single cohort. For more information, please go to www.iedea.org.
