Contact: Riko Boone, riko.boone@treatmentactiongroup.org

April 1, 2024  – Treatment Action Group (TAG) is proud to be one of the organizational sponsors of SYNChronicity 2024 (SYNC 2024). This annual national conference for HIV, HCV, STIs, harm reduction, and LGBTQ health will be held in Arlington, Virginia, from May 29 – 31; more than 1500 attendees are expected to participate.

SYNChronicity is organized by HeathHIV, HealthHCV, and the National Coalition for LGBTQ Health, and this is the tenth conference, featuring a poster hall, a variety of on-demand trainings and course, live plenary sessions, online networking opportunities and more.

Riko Boone, TAG’s HIV Program Director said, “TAG is very honored to contribute as one of the SYNChronicity Conference’s organizational sponsors. The six tracks featured at the conference — HIV prevention, HIV treatment, viral hepatitis, harm reduction, STIs, and LGBTQ health — are all issues that TAG is engaged around on a daily basis. The conference aligns very closely to our mission of accelerating universal and equitable access to biomedical, community-level, and structural interventions to advance health outcomes across these areas, and we enthusiastically look forward to attending the meeting in May.”

During the conference, TAG will present a workshop on “Leveraging HIV and HCV Advocacy Opportunities to End the Epidemics.” Workshop attendees will identify strategies in the NHAS and the HCV Elimination Plan to address HIV, HCV, and HIV/HCV co-infection; identify opportunities for the HIV and HCV communities to partner in advancing these strategies; understand the importance of these partnerships from the perspective of these communities and public health; and learn about  participating in advocacy campaigns to implement HIV and HCV and HIV/HCV co-infection strategies in the NHAS and Elimination Plans.

HCV can be cured with 8-12 weeks of treatment, yet, almost 14,000 people in the United States died from hepatitis C-related liver disease in 2021, compared with almost 20,000 deaths from HIV in 2021. Massive scale-up of harm reduction measures and awareness raising programs on HCV risk factors; implementation of point-of-care HCV confirmatory testing at decentralized facilities followed by linkage to care, and CDC guidelines on HCV screening — with a focus on people who inject drugs, homeless people and incarcerated people — and passage of the White House proposed plan to eliminate HCV are essential to meeting the HCV elimination goals.

This is the tenth SYNChronicity conference, and this year sessions will be covering a diverse selection of topics, including: transgender health, black women’s health, biomedical innovations, community engagement, ending epidemics, and emerging pandemics and syndemics (e.g., sexually transmitted infections, COVID-19, Mpox, etc.). The conference has something for everyone in the healthcare community, from clinicians to case managers.

You can find all the details about SYNC2024, including registration at: https://syncconference.org/

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