HIV Research Funding: President and CEO of the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative Seth Berkley writes in a post on The Hill’s “Congress Blog”: “U.S. government support for research into HIV prevention – most notably an AIDS vaccine – has been crucial to seeding what scientists are calling a prevention revolution. Without it, we would not be where we are today. … In these economically tough times, we must not forget the long term cost-savings promise of AIDS vaccines – and keep doing all we can to make that promise a reality” (5/18). 

GAVI Working For More Affordable Vaccines: GAVI Alliance Interim CEO Helen Evans writes that the fight against vaccine-preventable diseases “is not only a moral issue, it also has an economic impact,” in a guest post on the Global Health Council’s “Blog 4 Global Health,” where she describes the group’s efforts to make vaccines more affordable (5/18).

Interview With HIV Scientist: The Center for Global Health Policy’s “Science Speaks” blog interviews Louis Picker, associate director of the Oregon Health & Science University’s Vaccine and Gene Therapy Institute, about his research on an HIV vaccine and why a vaccine is still needed (Mazzotta, 5/18).

Building A Non-Communicable Disease (NCD) Movement: “The time is now for the NCD movement to make a concerted effort to engage the rest of the world, especially women and youth, in this fight. We need to mount a social movement framing NCDs as the social justice issue of our generation,” Nalini Saligram, founder & CEO of Arogya World, and Sandeep Kishore, co-chair of the Young Professionals Chronic Disease Network, write in the Huffington Post (5/17).

Behavior Change To Fight HIV: The Center for Global Development’s Mead Over writes on the center’s “Global Health Policy” blog that even though the “dramatic evidence that ART lowers the infectivity of HIV … it takes more than this confirmatory experimental trial to argue that prevention resources should be re-allocated towards treatment.” Over shows two models that he says demonstrate “behavioral HIV prevention still deserves the highest priority” (5/17).   

Update On Global Fund Board Meeting: “As part of its multi-year pledge in support of the Fund, the United States called for strong reforms to improve the Fund’s transparency, accountability, and fiduciary controls. I am pleased that my fellow Board members took the United States’ call to action seriously,” U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator Ambassador Eric Goosby writes on the State Department’s “DipNote” blog about the recent Global Fund board meeting (5/17).