ViiV Healthcare announced £3 million global fund to research the impact of COVID-19 on the HIV community and fill gaps in prevention, treatment and care during the pandemic.
ViiV Healthcare announced the creation of the Global HIV and COVID-19 Emergency Response Fund. The £3 million fund will make available critical financial resources for research projects to study the medical and scientific impact COVID-19 is having on people living with HIV and community-based grants to help address specific challenges to the HIV community created by the global pandemic.
The ViiV Healthcare Global HIV and COVID-19 Emergency Response Fund will be divided equally between two programmes and grants will be available through a request for proposal (RFP) process. The Research Emergency Response Fund will make available up to £1.5 million to support scientific research about the impact of COVID-19 on people living with HIV. The Community Emergency Response Fund will make available up to £1.5 million to support community-based activities that address the specific challenges faced by people living with HIV during this pandemic.
Research Emergency Response Fund
To help improve the understanding and management of the COVID-19 pandemic in people living with HIV, ViiV Healthcare is inviting research proposals within three priority areas of interest that include epidemiology and real-world data, healthcare systems management initiatives in COVID-19 environments, and biomarkers indicative of disease susceptibility, severity, and progression.
Successful proposals will be awarded grants from the £1.5 million Research Emergency Response Fund to undertake independent research through ViiV Healthcare’s existing Investigator Sponsored Studies (ISS) programme. Requests for proposals will be open from 27 April through 18 May. The proposals will be reviewed by an internal ViiV Healthcare scientific panel and successful applicants notified by 5 June.
Community Emergency Response Fund
ViiV Healthcare will seek applications from community organisations to support their work in addressing the specific challenges that have arisen for people living with HIV or affected by HIV as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Through the £1.5 million Community Emergency Response Fund, grants will be made available to support ongoing access to critical HIV prevention, care and outreach services, differentiated models of service delivery, short term payments for critical community staff, and community monitoring and feedback on the impact of COVID-19 to HIV services and support. The Community Emergency Fund is not intended for the purchase of pharmaceutical products.
The Community Emergency Response Fund will support existing grantees of ViiV Healthcare’s Positive Action or Government Affairs (GA) or Global Public Health (GPH). Requests for proposals will be open from 27 April through 15 May. The proposals will be reviewed by an internal ViiV Healthcare panel and successful applicants notified by 25 May.
More information here.
