Priorities for Future Research
Photo: Olivier Asselin |
The Foundation is constantly exploring new avenues for pediatric HIV/AIDS research, looking to engage the world’s top researchers and practitioners in our quest to create a generation free of HIV.
Our research team is constantly monitoring currently relevant and emerging areas requiring further research. In addition, the Foundation has participated in recent consultations that have shaped the international HIV research landscape, including high-level meetings on PMTCT and operations research with the WHO, UNICEF, and others.
Through a collaborative decision-making process between our Senior Leadership Team, Foundation research experts, and external research experts, we have identified the following priorities for future research:
- Conduct ongoing, comprehensive evaluations of our programs, better utilizing the data the Foundation already collects, to answer important questions that can inform the fields of HIV prevention, care, and treatment.
- Assess interventions to improve the numbers of women and infants who complete each step in the PMTCT process. Identify cost-effective interventions that will have the biggest impact on decreasing the rate of HIV infection among infants.
- Assess interventions that will increase identification of HIV-infected infants and their enrollment into care and treatment programs.
- Improve our understanding of breastfeeding transmission of HIV and explore new strategies to reduce transmission.
- Improve our understanding of the immunology of HIV – with a focus on findings that could contribute to the development and testing of a vaccine for the prevention of HIV infection in infants.