Treat All and beyond: addressing methods, data and capacity building challenges in the African regions of IeDEA

Project Summary/Abstract According to UNAIDS, 25.7 million (70.8%) of the 36.3 million people who lived with HIV (PLWHIV) in 2017 were living in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). The International epidemiology Databases to Evaluate AIDS (IeDEA, see www.iedea.org) is an international research consortium, which was established in 2006 by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) to collect and define key variables, harmonize data, and implement methodology to address high priority research questions. The four African regions of IeDEA (Central, East, Southern and West Africa) follow over 1,000,000 patients, including infants, children, adolescents and adults, and represent the largest network of HIV care and treatment facilities in sub-Saharan Africa. The African regions of IeDEA convened ?All-Africa? meetings in 2013 in Kampala, Uganda and 2017 in Kigali, Rwanda to discuss priorities for multi-regional research. Here we propose the third 'All-Africa' meeting of the IeDEA network, which will bring together approximately 100 investigators, including local PhD students and post-docs, from the 23 sub-Saharan African countries participating in IeDEA, the US, France, and Switzerland to share knowledge and methods, review research priorities on Treat All and NCDs, and develop multiregional research collaborations. The meeting will build on the two previous meetings with the following three aims: (i) to follow-up on the 'treat all' research priorities developed at the 2017 All Africa meeting of IeDEA, including discussion of methodological approaches and the need for enhanced data collection; (ii) to develop an agenda for multiregional research on NCDs and other co-morbidities, to discuss methodological challenges and identify needs for enhanced data collection, and (iii) to bring together local PhD students and early-career investigators in targeted workshops on data analysis, grant writing, manuscript writing; and to discuss how capacity building within IeDEA can be strengthened. The meeting will include workshops for junior researchers, plenary presentations, panel discussions and carousel small group discussions around clearly defined themes. The approach is designed to maximize sharing information and networking between individuals from different African IeDEA regions. The anticipated outcomes include the identification of focused multiregional research projects based on the priorities defined for ?Treat All? implementation research, NCDs and co-morbidities, with enhanced data collection in selected sites if required.