title: Stakeholder Engagement in HIV Cure Research: Lessons Learned from Other HIV Interventions and the Way Forward.
abstract: Clinical and basic science advances have raised considerable hope for achieving an HIV cure by accelerating research. This research is dominated primarily by issues about the nature and design of current and future clinical trials. Stakeholder engagement for HIV cure remains in its early stages. Our analysis examines timing and mechanisms of historical stakeholder engagement in other HIV research areas for HIV-uninfected individuals [vaccine development and pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP)], and HIV-infected individuals (treatment as prevention, prevention of mother-to-child transmission, and treatment of acute HIV infection) and articulate a plan for HIV cure stakeholder engagement. The experience from HIV vaccine development shows that early engagement of stakeholders helped manage expectations, mitigating the failure of several vaccine trials, while paving the way for subsequent trials. The relatively late engagement of HIV stakeholders in PrEP research may partly explain some of the implementation challenges. The treatment-related stakeholder engagement was strong and community-led from the onset and helped translation from research to implementation. We outline five steps to initiate and sustain stakeholder engagement in HIV cure research and conclude that stakeholder engagement represents a key investment in which stakeholders mutually agree to share knowledge, benefits, and risk of failure. Effective stakeholder engagement prevents misconceptions. As HIV cure research advances from early trials involving subjects with generally favorable prognosis to studies involving greater risk and uncertainty, success may depend on early and deliberate engagement of stakeholders.
authors.affiliation: 1 HIV, Hepatitis and STI Unit, World Health Organization , Regional Office for the Western Pacific, Manila, The Philippines .
authors.forename: Ying-Ru
authors.initials: YR
authors.lastname: Lo
authors.affiliation: 2 University of California San Francisco School of Medicine , San Francisco, California.|3 University of North Carolina Project-China , Guangzhou, P.R. China .
authors.forename: Carissa
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Chu
authors.affiliation: 4 US Military HIV Research Program , Bethesda, Maryland.|5 Henry M. Jackson Foundation for the Advancement of Military Medicine , Bethesda, Maryland.
authors.forename: Jintanat
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Ananworanich
authors.affiliation: 4 US Military HIV Research Program , Bethesda, Maryland.|5 Henry M. Jackson Foundation for the Advancement of Military Medicine , Bethesda, Maryland.
authors.forename: Jean-Louis
authors.initials: JL
authors.lastname: Excler
authors.affiliation: 3 University of North Carolina Project-China , Guangzhou, P.R. China .|6 Institute of Global Health and Infectious Diseases, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill , Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
authors.forename: Joseph D
authors.initials: JD
authors.lastname: Tucker
mesh_terms: D016915:AIDS Vaccines / Q000627:therapeutic use*; D019380:Anti-HIV Agents / Q000627:therapeutic use*; D003256:Community Participation; D015658:HIV Infections / Q000188:drug therapy* / Q000517:prevention & control; D006801:Humans; D065129:Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis; D012106:Research / Q000639:trends*
chemical_list: D016915:AIDS Vaccines; D019380:Anti-HIV Agents