Renee Heffron, Ph.D., M.P.H., on choice in HIV prevention | IAS 2026

Renee Heffron, Ph.D., M.P.H., a professor and AIDS researcher at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and director of the university's Centers for AIDS Research, is co-chairing a preconference meeting today on HIV prevention before the official start tomorrow of the International AIDS Society’s AIDS 2026, the 26^th International AIDS Conference meeting in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

One of the preconference sessions focuses on choice among HIV prevention options — daily pills, injectables and other modalities — a topic Heffron said involves far more than what an individual patient might select from. Governments, funding groups, manufacturers and others make decisions that determine which options are available to patients, she noted in an interview with Managed Healthcare Executive.

Heffron said choice matters even more in prevention than in treatment, because someone using pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) first has to decide they need it at all before weighing the burden of a pill, an injection site reaction, or the risk that a partner or family member discovers their medication. “Prevention is hard,” she said, and any friction can send a person back to questioning whether they need it in the first place. Heffron said contraception is a precedent that shows that adding choices leads to great adoption.

Another session at today’s preconference meeting is titled “Expanding the biomedical HIV prevention. " Rebeca Plank, M.D., M.P.H., a scientist at Merck, is scheduled to make a presentation about the company’s investigational once-monthly oral PrEP product, MK-8527. Heffron said a monthly pill could ease the burden of daily dosing of current oral PrEP and, unlike lenacapavir or cabotegravir, would not require an injection.

The conference in Rio is taking place approximately 18 months after major reductions in U.S. government support for HIV programs, including dissolution of the United States Agency for International Development and disruption in funds for the U.S. President’s Emergency Plans for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR). Heffron said the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria has stepped in with far less money than PEPFAR previously provided but has kept a pathway open for medicines to reach patients, and that some countries, including Kenya, have leaned on integrating HIV services into broader health systems. Others, including Lesotho, have far fewer resources to draw on, she said. Still, Heffron described the HIV prevention field as “some of the most resilient people I've ever known" and said the community has moved past an initial period of despair toward new collaborations and funding sources.