The Office of AIDS Research (OAR), the coordinating body of the HIV/AIDS research agenda and priority-setting entity at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), is sponsoring the “Access, Delivery, Engagement, and Retention for Long-Acting HIV Prevention and Treatment in the United States” Challenge (LAUNCH Challenge) to encourage and reward innovative ideas to address persistent, well-documented barriers to the implementation and scale up of HIV prevention and treatment interventions. The LAUNCH Challenge is one opportunity to foster and reward innovation in HIV implementation science under an umbrella program recently launched by OAR, called Advancing Research in Implementation Science to End HIV (ARISE-HIV).
The HIV prevention and treatment landscape is rapidly changing with the introduction of long-acting products, creating new opportunities, and new implementation challenges, for how prevention and treatment interventions are delivered and scaled. Long-acting (LA) products for HIV prevention and treatment have the potential to be transformative innovations, but their impact will depend on effective implementation strategies that address health system, provider, and community-level determinants of adoption, delivery, and sustained use. LA products refer to biomedical interventions that last longer than single-day dosing. For example, Cabotegravir consists of a bi-monthly injection that prevents HIV transmission, and as a formulation for antiretroviral therapy, it consists of a bimonthly injection to treat HIV and suppress viral load. Another promising example is lenacapavir (LEN), a long-acting capsid inhibitor currently being evaluated for HIV prevention and treatment, with formulations designed to be administered as infrequent injections with dosing intervals of up to six months. These products – and others – offer important opportunities to accelerate progress toward ending the HIV epidemic. However, considerable implementation challenges must be addressed to achieve the greatest public health impact from such innovations.
With long-acting HIV prevention and treatment products becoming available, there is an urgent need to develop and deploy timely practical implementation solutions to overcome barriers to delivery and scale up and realize their full public health impact. To address barriers and constraints at multiple levels we need solutions that focus on health system adaptation and service delivery innovation. The success of these solutions will rely on robust stakeholder engagement, partnerships - across industry, donors, implementers, researchers, and community members, as well as dedicated leadership and vision.
This competition solicits innovative and actionable ideas to address challenges and constraints associated with the prevention of HIV transmission, and HIV treatment, through uptake of LA antiretroviral products. This competition will prioritize the rewarding of ideas that propose creative solutions, pragmatic approaches, and novel implementation strategies to address these challenges. The Challenge is offering a total prize purse of $1 million dollars across two phases. Prizes will be awarded to teams who submit the most compelling ideas (Phase 1) and related implementation and evaluation plans (Phase 2).
As mentioned above, this LAUNCH Challenge is one part of the ARISE-HIV program. The goal of the ARISE-HIV program is to accelerate implementation research to end the HIV epidemic. ARISE involves all NIH Institutes, Centers and Offices that award HIV funds and support research on prevention, care, and treatment, including co-occurring conditions / co-morbidities, as well as capacity-strengthening around HIV implementation science.
What is the Opportunity?
This Challenge offers the opportunity to compete for cash prizes. The National Institutes of Health (NIH), Office of AIDS Research (OAR) is currently offering a prize pool of $1,000,000 that will be awarded across teams who successfully complete the defined objectives of the challenge. Phase 1 of the Challenge seeks actionable, pragmatic, and innovative ideas to optimize the implementation of LA products by addressing access, delivery, engagement, and retention across a range of settings, providers, health systems, and institutional and policy leaders in the United States. Phase 2 of the Challenge seeks plans for implementing those winning ideas from Phase 1. Ideas from a large range of submitters are welcome, including individuals or teams of individuals, community-based organizations, academia, industry, and teams across multiple organizations and sectors. Submissions from individuals or organizations not currently funded by NIH are encouraged. Ideas that bridge settings and propose key partnerships are likely to have the greatest generalizability and are encouraged. OAR will host informational webinars to provide additional guidance on the Challenge and submission process. Ultimately, the goal of the current Challenge is to identify promising ideas and reward teams in developing implementation plans (including how to evaluate the effects of implementation), with the potential for future Challenge awards recognizing successful implementation of the plans.
OAR recognizes that developing a rigorous implementation and evaluation plan requires skills and experience that not all teams will have in equal measure. Phase 1 is intended to surface the best ideas, not the most credentialed teams. To support Phase 1 winners as they develop their Phase 2 submissions, OAR will offer a series of webinars and office hours covering key topics in implementation planning, evaluation design, and partnership development. These sessions are designed to be accessible and useful to participants from all backgrounds, including community-based organizations, peer navigators, and others who bring lived experience and frontline expertise to this work. Participation is encouraged but not required. Additional details, including session schedules and topics, will be provided to Phase 1 winners at the time of invitation to compete in Phase 2.
