By Meaghan Lee Callaghan; video edited by Landon Gray

The year 2025 has been turbulent so far in HIV research and care. A product that has so much promise has been FDA approved for use in preventing HIV uptake: the long-acting injectable lenacapavir (Yeztugo, Gilead). On the other hand, federal budget cuts have hurt research funding in all aspects of healthcare, but especially in HIV/AIDS investigations.

In this landscape, Anna K. Person, MD, a professor of medicine and the director of education and faculty development in the Division of Infectious Diseases at Vanderbilt University, in Nashville, Tennessee, assumed the chair position for the HIV Medicine Association (HIVMA). Prior to IDWeek 2025, Dr. Person talked to Infectious Disease Special Edition about the direction HIVMA is taking and her goals as chair of the organization.

This transcript was made using artificial intelligence.

00:00:06:05

My name is Dr. Anna Person. I am the incoming chair of the HIV Medicine Association, and I’m an adult infectious disease and HIV provider, out of Nashville, Tennessee, at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.

Q: Can you tell us a bit about your career in infectious disease?

00:00:22:12 

I’m one of those, sort of unusual, people who always knew that I wanted to do: to be a doctor, first of all. And then very early on, I knew that I wanted a career in infectious diseases, and particularly HIV medicine. I was always interested in science, but I was really drawn to the social justice aspect of infectious disease and HIV medicine. It seemed really unfair and unjust that people were dying around the world of preventable causes, like malaria or diarrhea or dying of HIV infection when they shouldn’t be. And so that marriage of science and social justice really drew me to infectious diseases and HIV medicine.

Q: What are you hoping to achieve in your tenure as chair of the HIV Medicine Association?

00:01:08:02 

So it’s a very unique time in history. HIVMA in the next year, in 2026, you know, we want to continue to stand up and create resistance to some of the administration and Congress’ policies and proposals that are really gutting the federal HIV prevention care and treatment programs. And we want to continue our resistance and objection to that action. But we also want to provide a place for community, for HIV clinicians and researchers, and really to lift up those innovative strategies that our community has come up with in the midst of this really tough time to sustain and improve healthcare outcomes, despite the current political environment. We’re going to really leverage our members’ passion for advocacy and our commitment to ending the HIV epidemic, and really look towards grassroots advocacy for that. And we want to not just focus on this struggle, but also move towards reimagining and rebuilding, what might look like, for a healthcare delivery system that focuses on ensuring equitable access to healthcare for everyone.

Q: 2025 has been a mix. Lenacapavir as PrEP [pre-exposure prophylaxis] came to market, but HIV funding was cut. What are the HIV Medicine Associations’ goals in 2026?

00:02:28:18 

The HIV community has really found this to be a difficult moment. We have come so far over the last three or four decades swith advancement in HIV prevention and HIV treatment. And I think there’s this overwhelming fear and really strong sentiment that we just—we cannot go backwards. We cannot go to an era again when people with HIV were diagnosed really late or entering into care really, really late. And unfortunately, where I live and work in the South, we still see that with some frequency. We see young people coming in with advanced HIV, when really that should be a never event. So, we are thrilled about lenacapavir for PrEP; we are thrilled about lenacapavir for treatment. And it’s a really exciting and promising development. But where I practice, most of our patients don’t have access to those medications or very few people are benefiting from those really novel advancements. And so we have patients who have these very restrictive or arduous or antiquated healthcare insurance plans that are requiring us to put them on these very old regimens, multiple pills. So, not only can we not benefit from some of the single-tablet preferred regimens right now, but we certainly might not have access to these long-acting injectables. And that has to be a goal for HIVMA in the future that we’re working towards years where all of our patients, regardless of where you live in the South or the North, Medicaid expansion or not Medicaid expansion, that our patients and the people that we serve have equitable access to the best and brightest and the newest advances that we’ve really fought for over the decades. So our goal for the next year is to continue to mitigate the disruptions in HIV services and research, and to lift up some of the innovations that have come over the years. But to really make sure that the people that we serve continue to have access to these treatment and prevention strategies and really to do that we’re going to have to work in close partnership and collaboration as we have been with the HIV community and the people living