Last night, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) honored individuals and organizations for their work in the field of HIV/AIDS at the 2014 PhRMA Research and Hope Awards. The event served as both a celebration of groundbreaking achievements as well as a call to continue the hard work that is still required to put an end to HIV/AIDS.
The evening featured a conversation with President George W. Bush and PhRMA president and CEO, John Castellani. During President Bush’s time in office he launched an initiative to combat AIDS in Africa called the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR). When the Bush administration began PEPFAR in 2003, fewer than 50,000 HIV-infected people in Africa were receiving antiretroviral treatments that slow the virus’ progression towards AIDS. By the time Bush left office that number had increased to nearly 2 million. Today, the United States is directly supporting antiretroviral treatment for more than 4 million men, women and children worldwide, primarily in Africa.
President Bush noted that an important result of this massive effort on HIV/AIDS has been the improvement of African health systems overall. PEPFAR and other programs have helped advance professional standards and improve infrastructure. “This has raised an exciting prospect,” Bush wrote in 2012, “to extend the gains on AIDS to other diseases.”
“It is heart-wrenching to save a woman from AIDS, only to watch her die from cervical cancer, which is more prevalent in women with HIV,” Bush wrote. In response, President Bush and his wife Laura started Pink Ribbon Red Ribbon to save women from breast and cervical cancer, two of the leading causes of cancer death in Africa. Last night at the award ceremony, Bush noted that, like PEPFAR, the success of Pink Ribbon Red Ribbon has depended on collaboration between private companies, nonprofit organizations, and governments.
PhRMA Research and Hope Awardees
Since antiretroviral treatments (ART) were approved in 1995, HIV/AIDS-related deaths in the United States have dropped by 83 percent, resulting in a 32 percent decline in HIV/AIDS-related hospitalizations, improving overall care, and reducing the cost burden. With early detection and treatment, HIV/AIDS patients today have a life expectancy roughly equal to someone without the virus.
Treatments have also come a long way. Today, more than 40 innovative medicines and vaccines are being developed by biopharmaceutical researchers, including 25 antivirals, 16 vaccines, and 3 cell/gene therapies.
Medication is only as effective as the adherence program, and the road to widespread HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment relies on awareness and education. Thus, the Research and Hope Awards honored a wide variety of efforts that have been instrumental in the fight against HIV/AIDS.
Policy and Medicine had the opportunity to interview three of the winners earlier this week:
Phill Wilson: Excellence in Advocacy and Activism
Phill Wilson is president and CEO of the Black AIDS Institute, the only national HIV/AIDS think tank focused exclusively on black people. The Institute’s mission is to stop the AIDS pandemic in black communities by engaging and mobilizing black leaders, institutions, and individuals in efforts to confront HIV.
Phill talked to Policy and Medicine this week about his efforts. He spoke to the importance of raising HIV literacy in communities through training programs—he believes that education reduces the stigma attached to the disease and leads people to seek treatment sooner.
He stated that he has seen tremendous progress and improvement in his years as an AIDS activist. Today, medications can both reduce transmission of HIV by 96% and acquisition by 96%. Thus, putting these statistics together, we are very close to “breaking the back of the epidemic,” he notes. However, Phill’s “worst nightmare is being so close to the finish line and not finishing the race.” He believes to truly conquer AIDS, we must put particular focus on the communities that are most impacted. “Many people believe that the AIDS epidemic is over,” notes Phill. However, HIV/AIDS continues to disproportionately affect black populations, and the Black Aids Institute has worked hard to make sure that people appreciate this group’s ongoing needs.
Wilson is a recent recipient of the Delta Spirit Award from the Delta Sigma Theta Los Angeles chapter. He was given the Discovery Health Channel Medical Honor in July 2004 and was recently named one of the “2005 Black History Makers in the Making” by Black Entertainment Television.
Kathie Hiers: Community Champion
Kathie Hiers is the CEO of AIDS Alabama, a nonprofit organization that works statewide to provide housing and services to low-income individuals with HIV/AIDS as well as education, outreach, and testing. In 2012, Kathie’s work in fighting the HIV epidemic in its epicenter, the U.S. South, was featured in the documentary deepsouth.
Kathie has been involved in the fight against AIDS for several decades now. When Policy and Medicine spoke with her earlier this week, she noted that before 1996, often her role was too help people with AIDS die with dignity. Many were isolated in hospitals and in some cases given days or weeks to live. The advent of medication in the mid-1990s was “miraculous,” she noted. Many of her friends “came back to life” and continue to lead productive lives today.
While Kathie understands the value medication offers, she also stressed that much work still needs to be done. Last year, 15,000 people in the United States died of AIDS. Half of the losses came in southern states, including Kathie’s own Alabama. Understanding AIDS treatment requires acknowledging that poverty, education, and lack of resources feed into the issue, she notes.
Thus, AIDS Alabama has put a large emphasis on housing and mental health treatment. “Without stable housing, it is very difficult to adhere to medication. This is especially true with women,” Kathie stated. Indeed, many women with HIV/AIDS have children—mothers often put the well-being of their family before their own health, says Kathie. AIDS Alabama has provided housing and supportive services to HIV-positive Alabamians since 1987, and is the largest HIV/AIDS service provider in the state – providing more than 170,000 nights of safe and affordable housing to more than 700 low-income, HIV-positive individuals and family members last year alone.
AIDS Alabama’s outreach efforts include Gilead HIV screening tours to colleges with at-risk students. The organization also employs many people living with AIDS to help bring experience and understanding to help spread awareness. Their website has several helpful resources, including a moving page on a number of AIDS Alabama’s clients.
Hydeia Broadbent: Visibility and Progress
Hydeia Broadbent was abandoned at birth at the University Medical Center of Southern Nevada in Las Vegas where Patricia and Loren Broadbent adopted her as an infant. Although her HIV condition was congenital, she was not diagnosed as HIV-positive with advancement to AIDS until age three. The prognosis was that she would not live past the age of five. Now at the age of 30, Hydeia spends her time spreading the message of HIV/AIDS awareness and prevention by promoting abstinence, safe-sex practices (for people who choose to have sex), and national HIV testing initiatives.
Policy and Medicine spoke with Hydeia Broadbent this week as well. She has been an AIDS activist since age 6, and appeared in an emotional and amazingly inspiring interview with Oprah at age 11. Hydeia noted that when she was growing up she spent a lot of time in the hospital, and saw many of her friends die from AIDS. Now, medication is in a place where AIDS is manageable through self-examination and informed-decision-making.
Like Phill and Kathie, however, Hydeia stresses that HIV/AIDS does not yet have a cure. Thus, while treatments are in a good place, she states that it is important to let people know that this continues to be a very important issue. “We have grown complacent in America,” Hydeia states, “and in our complacency we’ve failed to educate our youth. There’s so much misinformation. People think there’s a cure. There is no cure.”
View her website to learn more about her efforts here.
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Policy and Medicine appreciated the opportunity to interview these three awardees. We can understand why they received recognition given each person’s passion for HIV/AIDS outreach and their compelling stories.
We would also like to congratulate Dr. Raymond F. Schinazi for his award for AIDS research. Dr. Schinazi is one of life science’s most recognized researchers. His resume speaks for itself: More than 94 percent of HIV-infected individuals in the U.S. on combination therapy take at least one of the drugs he invented, and it is estimated that his work has saved more than three million lives worldwide. His contributions related to the Hepatitis C virus are also expected to have a profound positive impact on the approximately 130-150 million people worldwide suffering from the chronic infection.
Bristol Myers Squibb also received an award for biopharmaceutical industry research. The interdisciplinary team of Bristol-Myers Squibb researchers recognized for the discovery and development of a new HIV treatment are: Dennis Grasela, Pharm. D., Ph.D., Exploratory Clinical and Translational Research; George Hanna, M.D., Global Clinical Research; John Kadow, Ph.D., Discovery Chemistry; Mark Krystal, Ph.D., Discovery Virology; and Nicholas Meanwell, Ph.D., Discovery Chemistry.
“I join my BMS colleagues in congratulating the team on this well-deserved honor,” says Francis Cuss, chief scientific officer. “Each of these researchers represents the many past and present scientists at BMS and elsewhere who have worked tirelessly over the years to provide new treatment options for HIV patients. As a company, we are focused on discovering, developing and delivering innovative medicines to help patients prevail over serious diseases. Our goal is to improve patient health through innovation in medicine. In the case of HIV, we continue to explore new ways to attack the virus to meet the unmet medical need.”