Plenary Speakers AIDSImpact 2023

Prof Dr Henry de Vries

New kids on the block, what can STI & HIV communities learn from hMPX?

Henry de Vries (1967) is dermatologist-venereologist with expertise in skin infections, especially sexually transmitted infections. In 2010 he was appointed Professor of skin infections at the University of Amsterdam and he is a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of London (FRCP). He is currently employed at the Public Health Service Amsterdam Centre for Sexual Health where he leads a research group including 15 PhD students in close cooperation with the public health laboratory and research department. He is also appointed as staff member at the Department of Dermatology at the Amsterdam University Medical Centres, the Netherlands. In 2021 he organised the STI & HIV World Congress as President of the International Society for STD research (ISSTDR) and he was scientific chair for the International Union against STI 2018 World congress in Dublin. He co-authored over 300 PubMed registered publications on various topics including Monkeypoxvirus, Lymphogranuloma Venereum, Syphilis, Gonorrhoea, and Leishmaniasis. In 2020 and in 2022 he was awarded the Bio Art & Design Award in joint projects with artists.

Prof Alastair Van Heerden

Pulling the future forward faster: Digital technologies and HIV

Alastair van Heerden is Research Director of the Center for Community Based Research at the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) of South Africa and an Honorary Associate Professor in Clinical Medicine at the University of Witwatersrand, South Africa. He has over 10 years of experience conducting clinical, behavioral, and community-based research throughout East and Southern Africa, the United States, Nepal and Brazil. He has an interdisciplinary focus to his research which combines his interest in technology for development and public health with the aim of improving access to care for underserved and poorly resourced communities. Prof van Heerden’s research aims to contribute locally informed and context appropriate knowledge to this domain by helping to identify technologies that both address barriers and provide solutions to the challenges faced by low resource communities around the world. Most recently he has been working to better understand how the digital sensing of behaviour and foundational AI models can be used to support health interventions in LMIC settings.

Dr David van de Vijver

Challenges and opportunities in the use of mathematical modelling for planning HIV prevention

David van de Vijver is an associate professor at the viroscience department of the Erasmus Medical Centre in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. His research focuses on the impact of antiretroviral and antiviral drugs on prevention of viral diseases and on the emergence and transmission of drug resistance. He is an advisor to WHO on HIV drug resistance. Dr van de Vijver is the coordinator of the Querido honors program for medical students at Erasmus University. Dr van de Vijver has been the author of over 100 publications which have been published in journals such as Lancet Infectious diseases, Lancet regional health, Science, Clinical infectious diseases, AIDS and the journal of infectious diseases. Dr van de Vijver is the principal investigator of the NIH funded project “Novel mechanisms contributing to failure of dolutegravir-containing cART in clinical practice” and “Epidemiological impact and cost-effectiveness of long acting antiretrovirals in Thailand. TEAMS study” which is sponsored by ViiV.

Prof Claude Ann Mellins

HIV in children and young people

Claude Ann Mellins PhD, is a clinical psychologist with over 30 years of experience conducting research and developing programs focused on psychosocial aspects of HIV disease, including mental health in children, adolescents, young adults, and families in the US and globally, including South Africa, Uganda, Mozambique, and Thailand. Her research has involved longitudinal cohort studies, intervention trials and collaborations with inter-disciplinary academic teams, medical and community providers, and governmental health officials.  Dr. Mellins is a Professor of Medical Psychology (in Psychiatry and Sociomedical Sciences) at Columbia University Irving Medical Center (CUIMC), the Associate Director of the Division of Gender, Sexuality and Health in Psychiatry, as well as the co-director of the HIV Center for Clinical and Behavioral Studies at the New York State Psychiatric Institute and CUIMC and its T32 Post-doctoral training program. In addition, Dr. Mellins co-founded and co-directed the Special Needs Clinic at CUIMC, one of the first and largest mental health clinics in the US for women, children, and families who have been affected by HIV.

Perrine Roux

Community-based participatory research 

Perrine Roux is a public health researcher with over twenty years of experience in the fields of HIV, Hepatitis C, and harm reduction. After a two-year post-doc at the Substance Use Research Center in Columbia University, she was awarded the position of permanent researcher at the French National Institute for Medical Research (INSERM) SESSTIM – Unit 1252 in Marseille, France. She is the PI of several mixed-method, multidisciplinary projects related to access to care and prevention for people who use drugs. Perrine currently leads a research group in the SESSTIM unit on community-based participatory research on HIV and harm reduction and has over eighty publications in this field.

Rosemary Delabre

Translating community-based PrEP research among women into action: Experience among sex workers, transgender people and partners of people who inject drugs

Rosemary Delabre is the manager of the Community-based Research Department at Coalition PLUS, an international network of community-based organizations involved in the fight against HIV and viral hepatitis. She has a Master and a PhD in public health, with a specialization in epidemiology. At Coalition PLUS, her work has focused on various community-based research projects regarding PrEP and HIV-related stigma.

The Roles of Key Population-led Health Services in HIV Response

Rena Janamnuaysook works as a Program Manager for Implementation Science at the Institute of HIV Research and Innovation (IHRI) in Bangkok, Thailand, where she established the Tangerine Clinic as the first transgender-led health clinic in the region. She manages and provides technical guidance for the development and implementation of HIV research and programs for key populations in Thailand and in Asia. Her previous roles include a Project Management Specialist in HIV Key Populations for the US Agency for International Development and a co-founder of the Thai Transgender Alliance, the first transgender-owned human rights organization in Thailand.

Prof Xiaoming Li, PhD

Presentation title to be announce

Dr. Xiaoming Li is Professor, South Carolina SmartState Endowed Chair in Clinical Translational Research in the Department of Health Promotion, Education, and Behavior in the Arnold School of Public Health.  He leads the Big Data Health Science Center (BDHSC). His work, experience and competencies are mainly in global health and health disparities research. Specific areas of research include HIV behavioral prevention and intervention; social stigma, mental health, resilience-based psychosocial intervention for disadvantaged children including children affected by parental HIV/AIDS or parental migration. He has been a consultant for the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development (Geneva) and other international institutes and agencies. He has worked in China, Namibia, India, Zambia, the Bahamas, and Vietnam on HIV-related research and was the founding Editor-In-Chief of the Health Psychology and Behavioral Medicine. He is a Visiting Professor of the Department of Psychology at the University of Johannesburg.

xiaoming@mailbox.sc.edu

Robin Gorna

Looking Back at our histories to move forward

A writer and activist since the mid-1980s, Robin Gorna’s focus has been AIDS, women’s rights, advocacy and strategy. She has led and founded several organisations, most recently the global SheDecides movement. Since early 2020 she has been writing about COVID, including living with Long COVID, and learning from AIDS for other health and social justice campaigns. She is Vice Chair of the Technical Review Panel (TRP) for the Global Fund to fight AIDS, TB and Malaria, and Co-Chair & co-founder of the Global COVID Communities Board, as well as a founding member of the UK NHS Long COVID Taskforce. In the early ‘90s her book “Vamps, Virgins & Victims: How can Women fight AIDS?” was one of the first to discuss AIDS and women. She is working on a new book: Two Plagues: An activist memoir of death, discrimination .

While still a student at St John’s College, Oxford she volunteered for UK charities the Terrence Higgins Trust and Frontliners (the UK’s national network of people living with AIDS). During these early days of the crisis, she initially co-ordinated the “Buddy”, direct support, services then joined the Board of Directors; she subsequently joined the senior management team as director of the Health Promotion Department. She went on to lead campaigns and organisations on three continents, playing key roles in the global response to the AIDS pandemic. Her international work started with a secondment to the European Commission in 1991 to advance European collaboration on AIDS, Drugs and NGOs. She worked on the 8th World AIDS Conference and co-Chaired the 12th in 1998, as well as the 6th International Congress on AIDS in Asia & the Pacific in 2001.

In 2003 she set up the UK government’s global AIDS policy team – a vibrant time when the UK held leadership of important global processes. After creating substantial global policy change, she relocated to lead the UK’s health and AIDS work in Southern Africa, having the privilege of working closely with the South African government as it shifted from denialist policies on AIDS, and working across the region, focusing on women’s health and AIDS in Angola and Lesotho. She has also served as Executive Director of the Australian Federation of AIDS Organisations, International AIDS Society and Partnership for Maternal, Newborn and Child Health (based at WHO), before returning to the UK to co-found the global SheDecides movement aiming to advance the rights of women and girls to decide about their bodies.