The 2024 AIDS Conference was held in Munich, Germany, in July, and representatives from the Midwest D-CFAR were there as facilitators, attendees, and presenters.

Rachel Presti, MD, PhD, is medical director of the WashU Infectious Disease Clinical Research Unit (IDCRU) and co-director of the Midwest D-CFAR Clinical Science Core.

The D-CFAR's inaugural HIV Works in Progress (HIP) seminar was held in July 2024, featuring a presentation by Dr. Dima Dandachi, Associate Professor at the University of Missouri. Dr. Dandachi presented her study, "ACCELERATE: A Multisite Type II Implementation – Effectiveness Hybrid Mixed Methods Study of a Simplified Accelerated ART Initiation Protocol for People with HIV Who Are Out of Care."

The burden of HIV is inequitably distributed so that it most heavily impacts historically oppressed communities in the US. Although these communities are most impacted by the HIV epidemic, they are also the most underrepresented in the current field of HIV research. The NIAID-STAR program, led by D-CFAR co-director Juliet Iwelunmor, was created to respond to this gap.

A team from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and Saint Louis University have established the Midwest DCFAR to help end the HIV epidemic in the region.

Scientists from Washington University have uncovered new insights into how HIV weakens the immune system of those it infects. Their findings were published in a recent edition of the journal Cell.