By Beverley Newman | Project Assistant
Your generosity has enhanced CAMI Health’s ability to advance global women’s health and empowerment! Every minute, a young woman is newly infected with HIV. In low resource countries, 225 million women have an unmet need for family planning, resulting in 74 million unintended pregnancies each year. CAMI Health works to advance comprehensive approaches to women’s sexual and reproductive health (SRH), including the development of Multipurpose Prevention Technologies (MPTs), female-initiated products that enable women to protect themselves from unintended pregnancy, HIV, and other sexually transmitted infections (STIs) simultaneously. As Secretariat of the Initiative for Multipurpose Prevention Technologies (IMPT), we put an emphasis on the incorporation of end-user perspectives into the product development process, ensuring that MPTs are desired, accessible, and acceptable to the women who need them most.
Thanks to your support of our global outreach efforts, mainstream recognition of the MPT field is expanding. Here are a few examples of our accomplishments over the past few months:
Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) Regional Webinar on MPTs
On May 13, in collaboration with the Reproductive Health Supplies Coalition (RHSC) ForoLAC, the IMPT hosted the first LAC Regional Webinar on MPTs. This live, Spanish-language webinar contextualized the need for MPTs within regional epidemiological data and the social realities faced by LAC women. We were thrilled to be joined by over 50 LAC-based sexual and reproductive health (SRH) stakeholders and hope to use this as a stepping stone for engaging LAC-based researchers and advocates in the IMPT’s work. You can view the slides and a recording of the live webinar on the CAMI Health website.
CCTN and MPT Stakeholder Round Table Discussion on Hormonal Contraceptives (HC) in MPTs
As a follow-up to the September 2014 convening on HC in MPTs, the IMPT, in collaboration with the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), recently convened a round table discussion that brought together members of the Contraceptive Clinical Trials Network (CCTN) and MPT stakeholders. The convening aimed to drill down on research gaps and challenges identified at the first meeting, and assess the status of ongoing research related to combining HC with ARVs. The group also explored issues related to bleeding patterns and acceptability, and discussed key questions surrounding successful MPT development and uptake. Slides from the meeting are available on the CAMI Health website.
MPTs Featured in New York Magazine
MPTs were recently featured in New York Magazine in an article that highlights them as the most promising frontier in women’s health prevention. We are thrilled to see MPTs gaining more mainstream recognition!
CAMI Health and the IMPT have busy summer and autumn seasons ahead. Our upcoming technical meetings, conference presentations, and publications include:
Indian Society for the Study of Reproduction & Fertility (ISSRF) Newsletter: We are thrilled that the forthcoming ISSRF Newsletter will focus focus exclusively on MPTs and will also feature articles by IMPT members. Edited by IMPT Steering Committee member Nomita Chandhiok, the Newsletter would be circulated to 1,200 ISSFR members, as well as Indian medical schools and research organizations.
STI MPT Panel at ISSTDR: In collaboration with the UCSF Bixby Center for Global Reproductive Health, and the Australian Sexual Health Alliance, and World Health Organization, the IMPT is co-sponsoring an exciting session on STI mpts at the 21st meeting of the International Society for Sexually Transmitted Diseases Research (ISSTDR)in Brisbane, Australia on 16 September. The discussion will focus on engaging STI researchers, clinicians, product developers and advocates in the MPT field.
Technical Convening on Clinical Trial Design Issues for MPTs: As an initial step in assessing the issues related to MPT clinical trial design, the IMPT will be convening funders, trial design experts, product developers, and other MPT stakeholders this autumn or early winter to discuss some of these critical challenges.
General Membership Meeting of the Reproductive Health Supplies Coalition (RHSC): IMPT Secretariat staff looks forward to connecting with other SRH partners at the 16th General Membership Meeting of the RHSC. A session panel submitted by the IMPT is under review for presentation at this meeting. Stay tuned for more details.
International Conference on Family Planning: We are thrilled to announce that the IMPT’s panel, “Multipurpose prevention technologies (MPTs): a promising response to current challenges around hormonal contraceptive methods and HIV,” was recently accepted as part of the program at the International Conference on Family Planning in Nusa Dua, Indonesia.
North American Forum on Family Planning: MPTs will be featured in two sessions at the North American Forum on Family Planning in Chicago. The first will give a general overview of the status of MPT development, and the second will give technical insight into combining hormonal contraceptives with HIV prevention drugs in MPTs.
To learn more about CAMI Health, the IMPT, and our work to advance MPTs, please visit www.cami-health.org and follow us on Facebook and Twitter.
On behalf of CAMI Health and the IMPT, we thank you for your steadfast commitment to women and girls. We are excited about the promising work ahead of us to make simultaneous prevention a reality; and we hope you will join us by supporting our efforts!
“If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” —African Proverb
By Beverley Newman | Project Assistant
By Beverley Newman | Project Assistant
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