Hi everyone! My name is Jorge Garrido and I’m the executive director of Apoyo Positivo (www.apoyopositivo.org), one of the largest HIV community based organization in Spain and also member of the European AIDS Treatment Group. I’ve been working in the HIV field the last 10 years and growing from a more interventional professional profile, focused in our programs and activities, to a deeper activist work.
The last years I’ve been training some physicians around Europe on community engagement beside also other stakeholder as EATG and pharmaceutical companies.
During 2016 my organization created, beside other big HIV NGOs as BCN Checkpoint, a National Platform advocating for PrEP in Spain. Our main goal has been to guarantee the community rights in the PrEP implementation process and to get an early access to those who need it more right now. We’ve been working with the Health Minister in the working group developing the protocol for PrEP Implementation.
Also recently I’ve been invited to join the CAB for DISCOVER, the new prevention trial from Gilead to prove TAF as PrEP versus Truvada. That was the main reason to join this course and have a deeper knowledge to do my best as community advisory board member in this new trial, which has been stopped in its implementation because it hasn’t followed the GPP principles.
I hope to learn enough and use this experience to do a good work in this research and in future ones.
Thanks a lot for the chance!
