Center for Global Health Policy’s “Science Speaks”: AIDS 2016: Elton John, PEPFAR announce first recipients of joint fund supporting sexual minority access to HIV services
Antigone Barton, senior editor and writer at “Science Speaks,” reports on an announcement by the Elton John AIDS Foundation and PEPFAR that the International AIDS Alliance and the Global Forum on MSM & HIV will receive the first grants under the $10 million LGBT Fund to “open and ensure access to HIV services for men who have sex with men and other sexual minorities in sub-Saharan Africa and the Caribbean” (7/21).

Center for Global Health Policy’s “Science Speaks”: AIDS 2016: Reducing stigma against gender and sexual minorities, a one-day training makes a difference
Ashley Gibbs, senior associate for health, and David Mbote, technical policy adviser, both at Palladium and both serving on Health Policy Plus (HP+), discuss the HP+ project, a USAID- and PEPFAR-funded initiative that works “toward mainstreaming expertise on gender and sexual diversity in the global HIV response,” and its predecessor, Health Policy Project (HPP), in which public health professionals participated in training to “better understand and address the needs of gender and sexual minorities in the context of HIV programming around the globe” (7/21).

Center for Global Health Policy’s “Science Speaks”: AIDS 2016: Trial shows higher dose rifampicin could reduce deaths among TB/HIV patients who are severely immunosuppressed
Christine Lubinski, executive director of the Center for Global Health Policy, reports on a discussion at AIDS 2016 on trial results that explored whether changes in TB treatment could improve the odds of survival for patients. The results “demonstrated that increasing patients’ rifampicin dosage along with the other TB medications and providing antiretroviral therapy within eight weeks of starting TB treatment reduced the risk of early death among co-infected patients” (7/21).