Ines Aristegui

This session discussed a variety of approaches to map, measure and work with populations in need, such as female sex workers, MSM, transgender women and people who inject drugs.

Strategies to accurately map populations, such as community-led mapping of hotspots key populations and a model to prioritize individuals based on their risk/vulnerability characteristics, shown to be effective interventions to strategically place HIV diagnosis and risk-reduction services in counties with limited resources. At-home dried blood spots collection to measure viral load in HIV-positive MSM longitudinally showed to be a feasible strategy for data gathering. Also, a validated scale to measure sex-work stigma was introduced providing new instruments to understand the role of this understudied barrier to HIV testing, prevention, and treatment. Finally, two studies provide evidence on factors that need to be considered when working with key populations: Viral rebound in women living with HIV who use illicit drugs was only associated with medication assisted treatment in the past six months and retention among transgender women was associated with police harassment and drug and alcohol consumption with clients.

Besides the diversity in the presentation, all studies highlighted the need to be flexible in the developing of new strategies to reach, assess and work with the community. Additionally, the need to work with the community and to address stigma was highlighted as the only manner to effectively reach the 90-90-90 goal. At the end of this session, the urgent need for translations was discussed as a manner to do scientific knowledge more accessible to professionals and members of the community.