Thinking with elimination: Hopes, challenges, and reflections from Australia and the UK on the 2030 UNAIDS goals

Since its adoption, in 2021, the commitment to End AIDS as a public health threat by 2030 has become a driving force for HIV interventions across the world. 

The United Nations Joint Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) has set ambitious treatment targets known as Project 95-95-95, which modelling predicts will dramatically decrease new infections at a population level. These targets are incorporated in Australia’s national and state HIV strategies (and articulated as the ‘virtual elimination’ of transmission). As in other areas of public policy, complex phenomena comprising global public-health strategies are increasingly articulated through the use of numerical targets and metrics. HIV is thereby emblematic of global neoliberal health governance.

In this workshop, we will critically explore the ways in which Ending AIDS by 2030 is being operationalised in different national and local settings, with a focus on Australia and the UK. We will explore key questions such as:

- What have the goals meant for specific communities, organisations, or initiatives? How have they been adopted in specific epidemiological, social and political contexts?

- What have the goals facilitated, and what have they precluded? What do the goals miss?

- Do the 95-95-95 figures adequately capture the complexity of HIV care and prevention? What alternative metrics could be more inclusive?

- What has been the impact of COVID-19 and mpox?

- What theoretical frames and interventions can be useful to theorise, problematise, and contextualise the “end of AIDS by 2030”?

Speakers: 

Dean Murphy (La Trobe University)

Kane Race (University of Sydney)

Jaime Garcia-Iglesias (University of Edinburgh)

John Rule (National Association of People With HIV Australia).

The workshop is hosted by a new Australian Research Council project, Addressing the opportunities and risks of HIV elimination in Australia, and will introduce findings from the Viral Memories project (based at the University of Edinburgh, UK) funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC).

LUNCH WILL BE PROVIDED.