CAMI International Education and Outreach for MPTs

Your generosity has strengthened CAMI Health’s efforts to advance innovative prevention strategies for women’s sexual and reproductive health (SRH)! CAMI Health promotes female-initiated approaches to SRH, including Multipurpose Prevention Technologies (MPTs), tools that provide simultaneous protection from unintended pregnancy, HIV, and other sexually transmitted infections (STIs). These technologies will put women’s health in women’s hands and could help to reduce maternal mortality, avert the risks of untreated STIs, and improve women’s economic and educational opportunities.

Thanks to your support of our global outreach efforts, the MPT field has been expanding and gaining more mainstream recognition. Here are a few examples of what we have been able to accomplish over the past few months:

Round Table on Commercialization and Social-Behavioral (CSB) Issues for MPTs.  On 17 March, the Initiative for Multipurpose Prevention Technologies (IMPT) convened its first Round Table on CSB issues for MPTs, aimed at investigating the complex CSB context of MPT product development. The meeting was a critical step in the IMPT’s goal to inform a global MPT product development strategy beyond technical elements by identifying and integrating MPT CSB elements into the traditional product development pipeline. The meeting was held in conjunction with the Microbicide Trials Network (MTN) Annual Meeting, which allowed us to get input from a range of perspectives, including the feedback of clinical trial site representatives. Thanks to the thoughtful engagement of the participants, we were able to drill down on some of the critical questions and challenges for MPT development in the CSB arena. We are currently developing a meeting summary, which will be available on the CAMI Health website.

MPT Workshop in Kenya. The IMPT Kenya Task Force recently held a meeting aimed at strategizing ways to message and raise awareness around MPTs and microbicides. The meeting was organized by Everlyne Ombati, an AVAC Fellow at the Kenya Medical Research Institute (KEMRI) and a member of the IMPT Network of Experts (NoE). The group discussed ways to prevent false expectations around immediate product availability and developed messaging aimed at avoiding stigma. 

Redesigned MPT Resource Center – Coming Soon! As Secretariat for the IMPT, CAMI Health serves as the information hub for the MPT field and we are currently in the final stages of redesigning our online resource center. The new resource center will feature a searchable database of MPT-related peer-reviewed research, media articles, presentations, meeting summaries, outreach materials, and technical reports. You can still access the previous version of the resource center while we put the finishing touches on this new tool. To keep up-to-date on the most recent developments in the MPT field, be sure to subscribe to our monthly eblast, “MPTs: Articles from the Field.”

Thanks to your support, we are planning several exciting technical meetings and webinars for the coming months, including the following convenings:

• Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) Regional Webinar on MPTs (Date TBD). CAMI Health, in collaboration with the Reproductive Health Supplies Coalition (RHSC), the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), and NIH Office of AIDS Research, is planning a live webinar aimed at engaging key LAC-based stakeholders working in SRH in the work of the IMPT and raising awareness around MPTs. The webinar will contextualize MPTs within the epidemiological and social needs of women in the LAC region and will be a starting place for engaging LAC-based SRH experts in the IMPT’s Scientific Agenda Working Group.
• Technical Meeting on Hormonal Contraceptives (HC) in MPTs (Date TBD, Washington, D.C.). As a follow-up to the technical meeting on HC in MPTs held in September 2014, CAMI Health will be convening members of the Contraceptive Clinical Trials Network (CCTN) to identify next steps for priority gaps and challenges in hormonal contraceptive and MPT research.
• Technical Meeting on MPT Clinical Trial Issues (Date TBD, Washington, D.C.). On behalf of the IMPT, CAMI Health will be convening funders, trial design experts, and product developers to assess challenges and issues related to effective MPT trial design. The meeting will cover topics such as bioequivalence options, drug-drug interactions, and single indication versus combined indication trials.
• Session on STI MPTs at ISSTDR (13-16 September, Brisbane, Australia). We are thrilled to announce that a session on STI MPTs has been accepted as part of the program at the 21^st meeting of the International Society for Sexually Transmitted Diseases Research (ISSTDR). The panelists will discuss MPTs from a variety of perspectives with a focus on preventing STIs. We hope to engage with STI researchers, clinicians, product developers, and advocates in this emerging and important field.

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