The North American Housing and HIV/AIDS Research Summit IX will be held August 1-3, 2018, in Washington, DC. The scope of Summit IX includes the full range of social drivers of HIV, including poverty, housing status, food security, employment, incarceration, race/ethnicity, behavioral health issues, stigma and intimate partner violence. What impact do these drivers have on ending the HIV epidemic? What policies and programs can influence these drivers or mitigate their negative effects?

The North American HIV epidemic has evolved and is now concentrated in socially marginalized and disenfranchised communities. The health disparities in this epidemic are striking, with most HIV infections occurring among those who are sexual minorities and communities of color. Promoting health equity will lay a foundation for people to access and remain engaged in treatment, allowing treatment to be effective. Evidence shows that HIV-positive people who are on treatment, engaged in care, and have an ongoing undetectable viral load do not transmit HIV infection to others. Viral suppression is the key to ending the HIV epidemic.

Growing evidence demonstrates the effectiveness of structural interventions in strengthening HIV prevention and treatment programs. These interventions include social protections (such as housing, nutrition and transportation supports), economic empowerment (including education and job training), decriminalization, anti-discrimination laws and campaigns to change social norms.

Rigorous research on social drivers and structural interventions is critical to lay the groundwork for these types of approaches and to support their scale-up.

We invite research, policy and practice abstracts relevant to the Summit IX theme of Structural Interventions and Ending the HIV Epidemic.

Topics of interest include:

• Housing as Healthcare
• Housing as Prevention
• Evidence Strategies and Practical tools for inclusion of social and structural interventions such as housing, employment and food security in plans to end the epidemic
• The “Housing First” model for delivery of housing and related support services.
• Effective age-related interventions, specifically for youth and those 50 and above.
• Care, well-being, and quality of life of people living with HIV and AIDS.
• Wholistic health and viral suppression.
• Connection between social determinants and viral suppression.
• Viral suppression and health care utilization.
• Connection between social determinants and HIV prevention
• Economics and the business case for structural interventions and plans ending the HIV/AIDS epidemic.
• Development of state and local plans to End the epidemic.
• HIV Undetectable=Untransmittable (U=U):

HIV-specific housing in the changing world of HIV and housing.

Abstracts are now being accepted for oral or poster presentations. For more information contact Christine Campbell at ccampbell@nationalaidshousing.org. The deadline for abstract submission is April 14, 2018

Click here to view a full list of the submission guidelines.