IAS Strategy 2026 onwards

The new IAS Strategy emerges from a period of great gains and setbacks for the HIV response. Since 2010, HIV acquisitions and AIDS-related deaths have reduced dramatically. Scientific breakthroughs have introduced long-acting treatment and prevention options that could be revolutionary if everyone who needs them had access. And countries with diverse epidemics and resources are effectively responding to HIV.

Yet, the global response faces immense challenges. Progress has stagnated in recent years, reflected in data that show no movement in numbers of HIV acquisitions and AIDS-related deaths from 2023 to 2024. Barriers to services, such as stigma, punitive policies and human rights violations, stubbornly remain. Key populations are disproportionately affected. On top of this, shifting geopolitics, an unprecedented funding crisis and cutbacks to HIV programmes threaten to curtail gains even more.

The world has not met the 2025 targets on the path towards ending HIV as a public health threat by 2030. That is why our strategy goes beyond that date.

Our vision is a world in which HIV no longer presents a threat to public health and individual well-being.

To realize our vision, our strategic objective is to accelerate an evidence- and human rights-based HIV response to ensure equity, reduce new HIV acquisitions, prevent HIV-related deaths, and sustain efforts until everyone living with HIV or vulnerable to HIV acquisition achieves optimal quality of life.

Our values

Put people first.
Be evidence-based and open-minded.
Build bridges and collaborate.

Our mission

We convene leading minds to accelerate scientific discovery.
We enable access to the latest knowledge for everyone.
We advocate for policies grounded in evidence and human rights.
We empower people to ensure the global HIV response follows the science and centres communities.

Our guiding principles

Strive for equity in access to knowledge, products, services and decision making.
Support the next generation of scientists, healthcare providers, policy makers and advocates.
Remain flexible to address emerging diseases and other issues impacting people living with or affected by HIV.
Ensure diversity, equity and inclusion and prioritize disadvantaged groups in our work, both internally and externally.

Our unique role is to unite the global HIV response because progress happens when science, policy and activism come together.

Therefore, we follow a two-pronged approach to work towards our strategic objective:

We provide platforms for all stakeholders in the HIV response to raise, discuss and address scientific advances, improvements in service delivery, and structural issues and determinants of health that increase vulnerability to HIV and limit access to HIV services and products.
We use our convening power, partnerships and voice to address the most critical issues based on evidence and human rights. We support the HIV response by achieving impact in four critical areas:

Sustainability of an evidence-based HIV response

What we will do

HIV funding has declined over recent years and hit a crisis point with the US foreign aid freeze and cutbacks in early 2025. International cooperation has declined, along with support for global health. At the same time, governments in low- and middle-income countries that were dependent on foreign aid for all or part of their HIV response face difficult choices. To support the sustainability of an HIV response that is grounded in evidence and human rights, we will:

Mobilize key players in shaping the sustainability of the response to align for strong messaging, concerted political advocacy and concrete action.
Proactively work with partners in regions with the highest HIV burden and where the epidemic is growing to support data-based advocacy and amplify calls for action.
Empower advocates to utilize our convenings to call for political commitment and adequate funding and add our voice in support of their efforts.

Outcome

Decision makers are committed to sustaining an evidence-based HIV response at global, regional and local levels.

Prevention at scale

What we will do

About 1.3 million people acquired HIV in 2024, according to UNAIDS, far from the 2025 target of 370,000 or fewer new acquisitions. This is despite a prevention toolbox that is full of effective options, including long-acting HIV prevention technologies. Inequities, domestic funding limitations and foreign aid suspensions have kept these tools out of reach in the most HIV-affected areas. We will:

Support policy makers and programme implementers to act fast on latest evidence on prevention technologies and their rollout.
Equip health service providers with knowledge and tools to support informed prevention choice.
Work with communities and policy makers to advocate for improvements in affordable access to, and create demand for, diverse HIV prevention options.

Outcome

There is uninterrupted access to evidence-based HIV prevention services.

People-first and stigma-free services

What we will do

Service delivery in resource-constrained areas was already grappling with multiple problems, including abiding barriers such as stigma and criminalization that keep services inaccessible for many people. Differentiation, thoughtful integration, and decisive action against stigma and discrimination are paramount. We will:

Support adoption by policy makers and funders of latest evidence and good practice in delivering differentiated services to reach all people in need effectively, with a focus on key and vulnerable populations.
Support adoption by policy makers, service providers and funders of latest evidence and good practice in linking HIV and other services to meet the needs of every person. Coordinate advocacy for tailored approaches.
Utilize our convening platforms to share evidence on effective practices in stigma-free service delivery and the positive effects of decriminalization. Keep public attention focused on these issues to instigate policy change.

Outcome

Policy makers, service providers and funders adopt the latest evidence and normative guidance to deliver services at scale that meet the needs of all people vulnerable to HIV acquisition, living with or affected by HIV.

Continuous scientific innovation

What we will do

To truly end the HIV pandemic, the world needs a cure and a vaccine, and ever more effective prevention and treatment options. Cuts to research funding and ideology-driven limitations to what can be studied, and how, pose a major risk to progress. Concerted efforts are needed to maintain research capacity and focus inquiry on the most critical evidence gaps. We will:

Support the search for an HIV vaccine and a cure by strengthening research capacity and leadership in lower-resource settings.
Leverage our convening platforms to foster innovation across diverse areas of research and knowledge generation.
Support the development of research agendas in key areas to stir scientific effort towards critical evidence gaps.

Outcome

Research and innovation to address critical evidence gaps in HIV science are sustained.

Partnerships

Everything we do at the IAS we do together with partners and IAS Members, as reflected in our values. We are grateful for the productive partnerships and diverse membership that we have been able to establish over time. This strategy commences at a time when resources and political support for global health shrink across the board, and it is more important than ever to move out of our silos and work together across disease areas. Therefore, we will deliberately strengthen our relationships with actors outside of the HIV space to work and advocate together.

Accountability

We track progress against our strategy through a results framework focused on outcomes, which also includes goals to further enhance our organizational capacity to deliver. Our thought leadership body, the Governing Council of the IAS, will review progress on a regular basis.