The WRI elevates, enhances, and expedites HIV treatment and prevention research on women and girls and identifies gaps in clinical care, research, and policy. This annual meeting assembles national HIV/AIDS thought-leaders in clinical care, HIV research, academia, advocacy, policy, government, the pharmaceutical industry, and women living with HIV and is responsible for initiatives that have directly impacted the progress and direction of HIV research.
WRI 2024 sought to examine the ways that law and policy affect health outcomes for women living with and vulnerable to HIV; specifically, the implications of recent policy and legislative decisions that affect the rights of transgender people, dismantle affirmative action, and limit women's access to abortion, as well as those criminalizing HIV.
WRI 2023 sought to promote comprehensive, holistic approaches that integrate behavioral health to address the needs and improve the overall well-being of women living with and vulnerable to HIV.
WRI 2022 sought to address the ways that women are systematically excluded from or under-represented in HIV research and clinical trials and identify solutions to address the underlying issues that perpetuate these inequities.
The Women's Research Initiative on HIV/AIDS (WRI), a program of The Well Project, convened Fall WRI Virtual 2021: Research at the Intersection of HIV and Women's Sexual and Reproductive Health: Best Practices, Gaps, and Barriers on October 7-8, 2021. The meeting sought to comprehensively examine the intersection of HIV and women's sexual and reproductive health, a relatively underexplored area of HIV research.
The WRI 2021 Virtual meeting assessed the current US policy landscape as it relates to women and HIV.
As a result of COVID-19, the WRI 2020 efforts did not include an in-person meeting. Instead we developed women-focused summaries and key takeaways from AIDS 2020; developed The Well Project Leadership Exchange; created the Expert Consensus Statement on Breastfeeding and HIV in the United States and Canada; and began to create a multi-media showcase highlighting the work of the WRI over the last nearly two decades.
The WRI 2019 meeting broadly addressed issues related to long-term experiences with HIV across the lifespan, including those relevant to older women who are aging with HIV and younger women who acquired HIV perinatally or as young children.
WRI 2018 contextualized the Undetectable = Untransmittable campaign in the lives of women living with and vulnerable to HIV addressing issues including relationships, sexuality, poverty/access to treatment, attention to health and well-being, and stigma.
WRI 2016 focused on women across the entire spectrum of HIV cure research, from clinical trial research participation and conduct, to ethics and stakeholder engagement, to advocacy, policy and funding around HIV cure.
The 2015 WRI embarked on a novel five-year visioning process to identify major policy needs and research challenges that must be addressed and overcome in order to significantly reduce the rate of new HIV infections and disease progression among women in the United States by 2020.
The 2014 WRI meeting focused on the role that violence and trauma play for women in HIV acquisition, access to care, care delivery, retention, and wellness outcomes.
Using a modified "treatment cascade" as a framework, the 2013 WRI meeting highlighted the reasons for gaps in women's HIV care and treatment and identified successful strategies to address them.
Preventing and treating HIV in women and girls – and the research required to do both of these things successfully – require careful consideration of the context in which HIV enters and becomes a part of women's lives. The 2012 WRI meeting focused on enhancing HIV research and care for women living with and at risk for HIV disease.
The theme of the 2011 meeting of the WRI was selected in order to encompass the broad range of interdisciplinary work that is both ongoing and necessary to effectively prevent and manage HIV disease in women.
An interdisciplinary research approach places research questions about women and HIV into biomedical, behavioral and social contexts, thereby addressing the many issues related to HIV in women.
The 2009 WRI meeting aimed to identify and then prioritize research questions in order to determine the area of focus that would most significantly impact our understanding of HIV disease in women.
The report from the 2007 WRI meeting updates many of the ongoing efforts of the WRI which have been developed since WRI's inception in 2003.
The 2006 WRI meeting focused identifying the most critical constraints to accelerating progress in research and focusing our efforts only on those specific constraints within our direct sphere of influence.
In 2005 the Women and HIV Think Tank changed its name to WRI to reflect the work of the group and ongoing commitment to measurable results in the management of HIV disease in women.
The 2004 Women and HIV Think Tank surpassed expectations by achieving all of its stated objectives as well as develping additional opportunities for collaboration and advocacy.
The 2003 Women and HIV Think Tank meeting was the first of its kind convened by The Well Project.