HIV Research & Clinical Practice

Advancing Implementation and Translational Science in HIV Research and Clinical Practice

Despite remarkable biomedical advances over the past four decades, translating HIV research discoveries into meaningful, sustainable improvements in prevention, treatment, and cure-related research remains a persistent challenge. While antiretroviral therapies (ART) have transformed HIV into a chronic, manageable condition for most people with HIV (PWH), the real-world impact of innovations, including integrated care models and long-acting injectables, depends on how effectively they are implemented and scaled across diverse populations and health systems.

Implementation and translational science provides critical frameworks and tools to bridge the gap between research and practice. This includes understanding barriers and facilitators at multiple levels, individual, provider, health system, community, and policy, and designing interventions that are feasible, acceptable, equitable, and sustainable. These approaches are essential not only for routine HIV care, but also for advancing cure-directed strategies and integrated interventions in real-world settings.

This article collection invites research and review articles that explore implementation and translational science approaches in HIV prevention, treatment, and cure-related research. Contributions should highlight innovative methods, consider contextual and structural factors, and address ethical and equity concerns in diverse settings.

Topics of interest may include, but are not limited to:

• Implementation strategies and study designs: hybrid effectiveness-implementation trials, pragmatic trials, stepped-wedge designs, adaptive interventions, and dissemination strategies for HIV prevention, treatment, and cure-related research interventions.
• Translational research approaches: bridging preclinical or early-phase discoveries to clinical practice and community-based programs, including methods to accelerate adoption of novel therapies.
• Health systems and service delivery innovations: integrated care models, task-shifting, digital health/mHealth platforms, supply chain optimization, and interventions in resource-limited or majority world settings.
• Addressing co-infections and comorbidities: implementation challenges for HIV-HBV, HIV-HCV, and other co-infections; polypharmacy and aging-related complications.
• Integrating mental health, well-being, and quality of life: strategies to assess and integrate mental health interventions in HIV care; addressing depression, anxiety, trauma, and stress in PWH; approaches to improve adherence and engagement through psychosocial support.
• Power dynamics and equity considerations: how structural inequities, stigma, gender, socioeconomic status, and health policy influence implementation and outcomes; strategies to engage underserved populations.
• Community and stakeholder engagement: participatory and co-designed research, patient and provider perspectives, ethical considerations, and strategies to strengthen trustworthiness and retention in trials and programs.
• Monitoring, evaluation, and sustainability: frameworks to measure fidelity, effectiveness, scalability, and long-term impact of interventions in diverse contexts.
• Global and local adaptation: tailoring interventions for specific cultural, epidemiologic, or policy environments, including strategies for scale-up in low- and middle-income or majority world countries.

Key words

• HIV implementation science
• Translational research
• HIV prevention, treatment and cure-related research
• Hybrid-effectiveness, pragmatic trials and adaptive interventions
• Mental health and psychosocial support

­­All manuscripts submitted to this Article Collection will undergo a full peer-review; the Guest Advisor for this Collection will not be handling the manuscripts (unless they are an Editorial Board member).

Please review the journal scope and author submission instructions prior to submitting a manuscript.

The deadline for submitting manuscripts is December 1, 2026

Please contact Zhiyuan Zhang at [email protected] with any queries and discount codes regarding this Article Collection.

Please be sure to select the appropriate Article Collection from the drop-down menu in the submission system.

Guest Advisors

Dr. Karine Dubé is an Associate Professor in HIV/AIDS Research at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine. She is senior socio-behavioural scientist and experienced research program manager who integrates biomedical research, socio-behavioural sciences, ethics and patient engagement around HIV-related research in the United States and Sub-Saharan Africa. She has over 20 years of experience in infectious disease-related work, including the socio-behavioural sciences and ethics of HIV cure-related research, HIV prevention, HIV treatment, Ebola, malaria, HSV-2 and more recently, Hepatitis B.

Dr. Henna Budhwani holds the endowed Michael and Paula Read Phelan Professorship in Obstetrical Nursing at the Florida State University (FSU) College of Nursing Institute on Digital Health and Innovation (IDHI). Dr. Budhwani conducts studies to address the causes and consequences of sub-optimal health among populations that experience stigma or whose agency is harmed by structural forces. Dr. Budhwani leads Translational Workforce Development efforts at FSU, is the Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA) Dissemination and Implementation Science Core (DISC) Co-Director, and Co-Director of the CTSA K2R program, which includes the institutional K12 award.

Dr. Courtney Benjamin Wolk, PhD, is an Associate Professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Penn Center for Mental Health in the Department of Psychiatry at the Perelman School of Medicine and the Executive Director of the Penn Implementation Science Center. She is a licensed clinical psychologist and an implementation scientist. The long-term goal of her research is to develop and evaluate strategies to promote the uptake of evidence-based care into routine practice, with the ultimate goal of improving the effectiveness of mental health services for children and adults in non-specialty mental health settings.