Our Story

In 1995, nine HIV treatment activists founded the AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition, now AVAC, to speed the development of preventive HIV vaccines. Within a year, this small group published its first annual report: Industry Investment in HIV Vaccine Research, and incorporated as a non-profit organization.

After two decades of pushing stakeholders to accelerate AIDS vaccine research and develop other new technologies for HIV prevention and a legacy of advocacy with our partners that have marked important advances in the field, we are expanding the work we do where HIV intersects with global health equity.

We believe that the struggle to end the AIDS epidemic isa struggle to provide truly effective HIV prevention, which must be embedded in resilient health systems, and founded on policies and practices that protect equity at every level of society from global to national to local.

This means continued scientific research to develop long-term solutions to HIV, such as vaccines and a functional cure. It means turning existing options, and those still in development, into real choices by delivering what people need for HIV prevention where, when and how they want it. It means integrating HIV services with sexual and reproductive health, and committing to strategies that overcome social barriers to HIV prevention such as stigma, discrimination and misinformation. It means centering communities in the response to HIV and to pandemic preparedness at large. It means unprecedented coordination among all decision-makers (including civil society and affected communities) to speed information-sharing and evidence-based innovation for HIV prevention and for global health security.

As AVAC and our partners champion the ethical development and delivery of biomedical HIV prevention options, our advocacy also focuses on how those efforts must be integrated into equitable health systems. The next pandemic is inevitable, and the existing threats to global health remain urgent. The answer for us all is to tear down the silos, support the most affected communities to lead in the decisions, and refuse to give up.