Founded in January 1992, the Treatment Action Group (TAG) is the first and only AIDS organization dedicated solely to advocating for larger and more efficient research efforts, both public and private, towards finding a cure for AIDS.
TAG supports the work of approximately 50 treatment activists as they meet with researchers, pharmaceutical companies, and government officials, ensuring a voice for people living with HIV in the process of finding and gaining access to promising therapies. TAG’s treatment activists, most of whom are living with HIV themselves, strive to develop the scientific and political expertise needed to transform policy.
In 1993, TAG successfully lobbied for a radical restructuring of the management of the U.S. government’s AIDS research effort. TAG’s recommendations for changes, first presented in 1992 at the International Conference on AIDS in Amsterdam, were incorporated into the 1993 reauthorization legislation for the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Through the creation of a powerful Office of AIDS Research (OAR), this legislation will finally provide the coordination, strategic planning and leadership that the U.S. government’s AIDS research effort has lacked to date.