“Bidirectional learning is a purposeful commitment to exchange best practices and experiences gained while implementing policy, programs, new innovations, and research in delivering U.S.-funded domestic and global HIV/AIDS programs.” - Federal Global/Domestic Bidirectional Forum

We are proud to work with colleagues from the White House’s Office of National AIDS Policy (ONAP), the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) Office of Global Affairs and Office of Infectious Disease and HIV/AIDS Policy (OIDP), and the Department of State’s Bureau of Global Health Security and Diplomacy (GHSD) implementing the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), to bring together federal staff from across 13 agencies and offices for bidirectional learning to share information, best practices, and new science for effective programs and policies aimed at ending HIV both globally and domestically.

We would like to hear how you are doing bidirectional work in your own community. Please email us here. For more information on U.S. Government Global-Domestic Bidirectional HIV Work, click here.

U.S. Government’s Global-Domestic HIV Bidirectional Work

Together, this year, we have had multiple events to support bidirectional work. In January, the Global-Domestic HIV Bidirectional Learning Forum brought together over 200 federal personnel working in the U.S. and globally in HIV/AIDS prevention, care and treatment policy, programming, and research. The all-day virtual forum provided an important opportunity for participants to share innovations, best practices, and lessons learned that may be applicable across borders, aligning the National HIV/AIDS Strategy (PDF, 1.76MB) and the PEPFAR Five-Year Strategy (PDF, 17.7MB) to end HIV/AIDS as a public health threat by 2030.

The Forum began with opening remarks from Ms. Kaye Hayes, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Infectious Disease and Director of OIDP at HHS, Admiral Rachel L. Levine, MD, Assistant Secretary for Health at HHS, and Dr. Mamadi Yilla, PhD, Acting Deputy Coordinator for Health Diplomacy at the Bureau of Global Health Security and Diplomacy. The Forum had four technical breakouts and smaller sub-group discussions on Testing Strategies, Optimizing Data for Programming, Viral Load Suppression, Retention in Care, and Pre-exposure Prophylaxis. There were also two sessions on broader topics, Equity and key Populations and Community Engagement.

Harold Phillips, Director of ONAP, closed the day-long forum and outlined federal staff goals:

1. Be willing to get to “yes” to embrace thinking differently and innovatively and being open to shared learning.
2. Continue bidirectional connections—across agencies, departments, countries, and continue to share resources, ideas, and dialogues.
3. Accelerate efforts and responses to achieving the overall goal to end HIV. This goes beyond a whole-of-society approach to a whole-of-globe approach to end the HIV epidemic.

In August and November, domestic and global agencies led topic-specific webinars for federal colleagues, sharing best practices to address mental health and health equity to end HIV.

A new resource page on HIV.gov has been launched to support global-domestic HIV bidirectional work across the U.S. government (USG). The resource page aims to foster the exchange of best practices and collaboration among USG agencies in their efforts to end HIV.

Again, visit U.S. Government Global-Domestic HIV Bidirectional Work, to learn more.

For more stories about USG bidirectional work, click here.