HIV prevention and treatment efforts are significantly influenced by policies and regulations at the local, state, and federal levels. Some policy decisions are highly specific to HIV, whereas other policy decisions are untargeted but likely to have a disproportionate effect on the health and behaviors of people living with or at risk of HIV. Both targeted and untargeted policy decisions can have disproportionate effects on NIH priority disparity populations, including racial/ethnic minorities, sexual and gender minority populations, and low-income populations. However, health policy researchers and policy analysis methods are not well integrated into HIV research. The overarching goal of this new Health Policy and HIV Scientific Working Group (SWG) is to organize and expand health policy expertise within the CFAR by fostering new connections between HIV investigators and health policy investigators, and catalyzing research to understand how HIV-related policies on prevention, transmission, and treatment impact HIV continuum of care outcomes. This SWG leverages the longstanding and productive CFAR partnership between Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Meharry Medical College, Tennessee Department of Health, and Nashville CARES. The SWG is newly engaged with the CFAR health policy expertise in the nationally recognized Department of Health Policy at Vanderbilt and the recently established School of Global Health at Meharry. 

To continue to advance the work of the SWG, we are developing a prioritized research agenda aligned with the expertise and interest of SWG members, the concerns and lived-experience of members/partners from community-based organizations, and the expertise of new members around health policy, healthcare, and structural racism that impact HIV. Areas of interest includes changes in insurer coverage of PrEP (e.g., Medicare) and PrEP continuum of care outcomes; legality, funding, and availability of substance use treatment centers and needle exchange services and the HIV/opioid syndemic; changes to the application process for HIV prevention funding; Medicare Part B and D, 340B, and HIV continuum of care outcomes; denial-of-service laws and PrEP uptake, and other areas

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• SPECIFIC AIM 1: To engage new members, build research capacity, and foster new connections between CFAR clinical investigators, community-based organizations, public health practitioners, and health policy investigators in the area of health policy impacts on HIV outcomes. 

• SPECIFIC AIM 2: To catalyze new clinical, community, and translational research to assess the po