World AIDS Day symposium at UCSF will highlight "Preventing Second HIV Epidemic"

• Keynote address
  Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi
  
  Recognized as a federal leader on AIDS issues, Rep. Pelosi will cover AIDS funding over the past year and emerging issues in the HIV/AIDS epidemic, including legislation regarding vaccine development, expansion of Medicaid coverage,and HIV prevention.
  
  
• Accomplishments and Challenges in the Next Millennium
  Thomas J. Coates, PhD, director of the UCSF AIDS Research Institute
  
  Deployment of a successful HIV vaccine is probably 10-20 years away, as new HIV infections in the U.S. continue to increase and the epidemic reaches an out-of-control level in other regions of the world, says Coates. He emphasizes that science is the only answer for successfully eradicating HIV on a worldwide scale in the way smallpox finally was eliminated during the 60s-70s. In his presentation, Coates will cover the importance of a comprehensive and targeted strategy by all members of the AIDS community - researchers, scientists, policymakers, patients, activists - in the next millennium to make HIV a relic of the past.
  
  
• The Spread of Drug Resistant HIV-1
  Robert Grant, MD, MPH, Gladstone Institute of Virology and Immunology
  and San Francisco General Hospital Medical Center
  
  The drug resistant variants of HIV-1 are transmitted to recently infected persons who have not yet been treated. Transmission of drug resistant HIV-1 has received much attention because it could herald the spread of more resistant strains that will limit the effectiveness of therapy, Grants says. Nevertheless, it is important to understand that fear that drug resistance will spread in the community should not be used as a reason to withhold therapy from subjects whose duration of response may be questionable because of a poor history of medical adherence or unstable social situation. Indeed, he stresses, therapy is associated with prolonged survival in the individual and decreased levels of infection due to partial or nearly complete viral suppression. The overall effect of therapy on the course of the epidemic may prove to be beneficial, but only if therapy is used widely in communities.
  
  
• Post Exposure Prevention and Primary HIV Infection
  Michelle Roland, MD, UCSF Positive Health Program
  
  Investigators from the UCSF Center for AIDS Prevention Studies, SF Department of Public Health, and the UCSF Positive Health Program at San Francisco General Hospital Medical Center have been conducting a feasibility study of post exposure prevention (PEP) medication, HIV testing, and risk reduction counseling for individuals with a recent sexual exposure or injection drug use exposure to HIV since October 1997. Roland will present an overview of the existing data related to PEP, preliminary results from the feasibility study, and future research plans of the UCSF ARI in this area. She also will give an update on current strategies for diagnosing and treating acute HIV-infection and on patients enrolled in the Options Project, a program based at SFGHMC that is dedicated to attacking the AIDS virus during the initial phase of infection.
  
  
• Detection of Recent HIV Infection: New Public Health Opportunities in Prevention
  Willi McFarland, MD, PhD, SF Department of Public Health
  Kimberly Page-Shafer, PhD, MPH, UCSF Center for AIDS Prevention Studies
  
  Advances in testing technology have opened up new ways to identify recent HIV infection, thereby broadening HIV prevention opportunities. San Francisco is the first city to integrate this new technology - a reconfiguration of the standard HIV antibody or ELISA test - into its public health activities for HIV counseling and testing, monitoring the epidemic, research, and prevention. The "detuned" ELISA test is based on the low level of HIV antibody during the first few months following infection. McFarland and Page-Shafer will discuss how it is being used and what we will learn about the HIV epidemic in San Francisco from this new tool.
  
  
• Re-targeting HIV Prevention: New Efforts for Infected and Uninfected Persons
  Cynthia Gomez, PhD, UCSF Center for AIDS Prevention Studies
  
  Gomez will discuss a brief history of HIV prevention efforts since the beginning of the epidemic and how these efforts must continue to change or be re-targeted in order to prevent a new wave of HIV infections. Her presentation will include recent findings on the important role that HIV-infected persons can play in prevention efforts and on creative efforts to promote sexual health among the uninfected.
  
  
• Making Prevention Work for HIV+ Individuals: The Intersection of Policy and Prevention
  Michael Shriver, UCSF AIDS Policy Research Center
  
  Sufficient and scientifically valid measures are available now to reduce HIV/AIDS from its epidemic status, but prevention efforts - which are successful when employed correctly - are carried out in such a disjointed fashion that the net result is poor overall health and unnecessary new HIV infections, says Shriver. As an HIV+ gay man and AIDS researcher, Shriver will look retrospectively at funding and epidemiological data to address some of the underlying myths regarding HIV prevention and the affected communities impacted by the disease. Stressing the importance of a coordinated and meaningful partnership between public health programs and the HIV+ community in order to see the end of the HIV epidemic, Shriver will delineate a three-point plan necessary to break the cycle of the disease in San Francisco.
  
  
• Closing Address: A Marshall Plan to Save Africa from HIV
  Former Congressman Ronald V. Dellums
  
  Africa is dying under the global pandemic of HIV, and the worldwide community must come to its aid, emphasizes Dellums. Each day in Sub-Saharan Africa alone, 6,000 people die from AIDS and 11,000 new HIV infections occur. The population most vulnerable to AIDS is between the ages of 15 and 49, which means African citizens who comprise "the most productive group and the reproductive group" are being affected catastrophically and their legacy will be a nation that no longer exists, he says. Dellums will cover the profound need for a global strategy to control AIDS and the role that he has taken in this effort.
  -end-
  Members of the news media who would like to cover the UCSF World AIDS Day symposium or arrange interviews should call Corinna Kaarlela in the UCSF News Office at 415-476-3804.
  
  University of California - San Francisco
  
  

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