James Pursey/EGPAF

EGPAF is constantly exploring new avenues for research into pediatric HIV and AIDS, and seeks to engage the world’s top researchers and practitioners in the quest to create a generation free of HIV.

EGPAF's research team is constantly monitoring currently relevant and emerging areas requiring further research. In addition, EGPAF has participated in recent consultations that have shaped the international HIV research landscape, including high-level meetings on PMTCT and operations research with the World Health Organization (WHO), UNICEF, and others.

Through a collaborative decision-making process between members of EGPAF's Senior Leadership Team, EGPAF research experts, and external research experts, the following priorities for future research have been identified:

• Conduct ongoing, comprehensive evaluations of our programs, better utilizing the data EGPAF already collects, to answer important questions that can inform the fields of HIV prevention, care, and treatment.
• Assess interventions to improve the numbers of women and infants who complete each step in the PMTCT process. Identify cost-effective interventions that will have the biggest impact on decreasing the rate of HIV infection among infants.
• Assess interventions that will increase identification of HIV-infected infants and their enrollment into care and treatment programs.
• Improve our understanding of breastfeeding transmission of HIV and explore new strategies to reduce transmission.
• Improve our understanding of the immunology of HIV – with a focus on findings that could contribute to the development and testing of a vaccine for the prevention of HIV infection in infants.