14th International Workshop on HIV Observational Databases

25th – 27th March 2010, Sitges, Spain

First Announcement and Call for Abstracts

Dear Friends,
We are happy to announce the date and venue for next year’s 14th Workshop: 25-27 March, in Sitges
Spain.

As you know, EuroCoord has taken over the Secretariat function of the International Workshop on HIV
Observational Databases (IWHOD), and the Workshop is now funded by multiple partners, including
pharmaceutical companies and other agencies and organizations. Although the organizational structure has
changed, the spirit of what has become one of the most sought-after meetings for those involved in
outcomes research based on cohorts and observational databases remains unchanged and we are pleased
with the success of. last year’s workshop in Lisbon. The Scientific Committee and Organising Committee
are grateful to our partners and to the HIV observational research community for their interest and
participation in the workshop and are looking forward to carrying on their commitment to this one-of-a-kind
meeting in 2010 and beyond.

The 2010 workshop will take place in Sitges, Spain, with arrivals by midday Thursday 25th March for an
early afternoon start, followed by an all day program on Friday 26th and finishing midday on Saturday 27th
March. Departures will start on Saturday 27th March 2010 in the afternoon.

This announcement will give you detailed information on:

• The format of the meeting
• The timelines for the program development
• The main topics of the program and special interest areas for potential collaborations

WORKSHOP AT A GLANCE:
• Arrive Thursday 25th March and depart Saturday 27th March

• A Welcome Lunch on Thursday, March 25th, followed by afternoon sessions

• A full day meeting on Friday, March 26th, followed by the Workshop Dinner

• Morning session on Saturday, March 27th

• Program will be based on abstract selection by the Scientific Committee

• 6 Sessions ~ 1.5 h, ~ 5 presentations, 10 min each, 30 min for discussion and debate in each session

• Poster viewing sessions are an integral part of the meeting

We continue to encourage attendees to take advantage of this workshop as an opportunity to arrange
individual meetings with colleagues outside of the workshop programme.

TIMELINES OF PROGRAM DEVELOPMENT

• Abstract Submission starts on Wednesday 4th November 2009,
• Abstract Submission Deadline date via the web-link below is by close of UK business (18:00
GMT) on Wednesday 9th December 2009,
• Abstract selection and final program by Scientific Committee: January 2010
• Abstract status will be notified to all who submitted an abstract: Week Commencing 1st February
2010
TRAVEL AND ACCOMODATION ARRANGEMENTS

Delegates will be responsible for booking and paying for their own flight and ground transportation to and
from the workshop. We regret that it is no longer possible to reimburse for travel expenses, but the
availability of low cost fares is an important factor in choosing the workshop locations.
The organizational changes, combined with the growth of the workshop and increasing expenses has
forced us to establish a delegate fee. The Scientific Committee is making every possible effort to raise
committed, multi-year sponsorship to allow us to minimize this fee while ensuring the sustainability of the
workshop in years to come.

The delegate fee (300€) will cover accommodation (2 hotel nights, breakfast) and workshop attendance
(abstract book, and access to sessions), lunch on Thursday and Friday, as well as dinner on Friday. The
Workshop Dinner on Friday will be by registration only. Please make sure to register only if you will actually
attend the Workshop Dinner. No dinner is scheduled for Thursday evening: delegates will be able to enjoy
the culinary delights in Sitges or Barcelona in their own time.

We continue to strongly encourage abstract submissions from resource-constrained settings. Recognizing

that the additional expenses may deter some from attending the meeting, we plan to offer financial
assistance for delegates from such resource-constrained settings, particularly those with student status.
Resource-constrained settings include Africa, India as well as Eastern and South-Eastern European
countries, whose abstracts have been accepted. Please contact the Secretariat for details.

All accommodation will be booked via Visual Response. Accommodation expenses associated with the
workshop (ie within the workshop start and close dates and time) will be covered by the delegate fee.
Additional costs, such as extra nights, room service, etc. will be the delegate’s personal responsibility and
needs to be settled on departure. Please note that Visual Response will need to have your arrival and
departure times by February 15 in order to ensure a room reservation. It is the delegate’s responsibility to
provide Dolores O'Sullivan at Visual Response (dosullivan@visualresponse.com) with this information in a
timely manner.

If you have any further questions please do not hesitate to contact us by email: IWHOD-
ScSecretary@isped.u-bordeaux2.fr

FORMAT

This meeting will remain faithful to the goals of presenting new findings or analyses and facilitating scientific
discourse on methods, results and clinical and epidemiological implications. We are once again aiming to
include attendees representing cohort studies from all regions. As in the past, this is a closed meeting and
all data presented will not be publicized outside of the workshop; thus we encourage discussion of work in
progress.

COHORT INVITATION

Attendance at this workshop is contingent on submission and acceptance of abstracts. We particularly

encourage abstract submissions from new cohorts and cohorts from Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe, and
South America.

We would like to ensure that scientifically active cohort collaborations are well represented at the workshop
and would be grateful if you could, therefore, please distribute this invitation within your study team.

SUBMISSION OF ABSTRACTS - RESEARCH AREAS OF INTEREST

We are interested in receiving abstracts from any relatively large scale cohorts/databases with new results
which are of clinical and/or public health relevance. The scientific committee will aim to maintain a proper
balance between clinically-oriented/relevant and more epidemiological/statistical/methodological abstracts.
Due to its small size, informality and the amount of time dedicated to discussion, this workshop is a
particularly good forum for presenting preliminary results of new issues.

This year there will be specific time dedicated to the areas of (1) Monitoring of ART with special focus on
resource limited settings’, (2) Integrating demographic surveillance systems with HIV cohorts’ and (3)
methodological/new analysis discussion of ‘when to start’, and we are particularly interested in receiving
abstracts on these topics.

The following is a list of some areas of particular interest; however, any cohort-related abstracts of clinical
and/or public health relevance to HIV are welcomed
• HIV related morbidity (includes HIV/Tuberculosis Co-infection, hepatitis co-infection)
• Non-AIDS defining morbidity and mortality (includes incidence of and risk factors for diseases not
traditionally considered to relate to HIV e.g. cardiovascular diseases, cancers, renal)
• Paediatric HIV and HIV in pregnancy
• Long term outcome of HIV & HAART ('efficacy'), When to Start HAART
• HIV in resource limited settings
o Strategies for monitoring treatment response
o Treatment failure and regimen sequencing
o Methods to deal with incomplete outcome ascertainment
• Tolerability and safety of HIV & HAART
• Viral genetic markers (subtype, resistance, etc) and response to antiretrovirals
• Host Genetics and HIV progression or response to antiretrovirals
• Methodology, including use of models developed with data from observational cohorts to address
clinical / public health questions
• Adherence to treatment and/or care
• ‘ARVs for prevention’ such as Microbicides and PrEP.

Although this is mainly a workshop for observational cohorts, observational analyses (i.e. not the
randomized comparison) from large and long-term randomized clinical trials will be considered.

ONGOING AND NEW COLLABORATIONS

IWHOD has proven to be a productive mechanism for fostering collaborations among cohorts across the
world by allowing time to present collaborative study plans and providing a forum for collaborators to meet
and discuss these studies. We would like to see as many preliminary findings ensuing from such
collaborations as possible, and strongly encourage abstract submissions from collaborative groups.

If you and your collaborators are interested in holding a side meeting at the workshop, please communicate
with your colleagues directly, and contact Dolores O'Sullivan (dosullivan@visualresponse.com) from Visual
Response to arrange for a time slot and a meeting room at the hotel as soon as possible. We regret that the
Secretariat can no longer cover the costs (e.g. room rental, AV equipment, etc), thus the investigators or
organizations involved in the side meetings will need to cover these expenses on site.
Please note that Dolores has currently booked a meeting room for the duration of the workshop and that we
will make every effort possible to keep side-meeting room booking rates reasonable.

RULES FOR ABSTRACTS SUBMISSION

Your abstract must be submitted via the web-link www.hivcohorts.com and should be a maximum of 500
words; this does not include the title information or the characters within the field of the presenting author
details.

The maximum number of abstracts each cohort or cohort collaboration can submit is SIX. The maximum
number of abstracts that will be accepted, per cohort, is FOUR (resulting in a maximum of FOUR persons
per cohort). Purely methodological abstracts (which might use data from a cohort, but only as an example)
do not count as one of the six submissions for that cohort. The number of methodological abstracts which
can be submitted by one person is TWO.

Since the outcome of abstracts submitted to CROI will be known at the time of the deadline for
submission of this Workshop, ABSTRACTS WHICH HAVE BEEN ACCEPTED TO CROI 2010 ARE
INELIGLIBLE for submission to the IWHOD Workshop. ANY ABSTRACT ACCEPTED FOR CROI 2010
AS A LATE BREAKER MUST BE WITHDRAWN FROM THE IWHOD WORKSHOP. PLEASE make sure
to let the secretariat know of any abstract accepted by CROI AS SOON AS NOTIFIED (ideally by 15
January).
ABSTRACT SUBMISSION

• Abstracts must be submitted in the form of Word documents – Font: Times New Roman 10.

• The inclusion of figures/graphics will not be possible, however, tables will still be able to be
submitted.

• For all cohort-based abstracts, the cohort profile must be submitted alongside your abstract. If
your cohort is submitting multiple abstracts, one author should be designated to submit the
cohort profile (one cohort profile to be submitted per cohort). New cohort profiles may be
uploaded directly on the website when submitting your abstract. Updated profiles of existing
cohorts should be sent to the secretariat (iwhod-scsecretary@isped.u-bordeaux2.fr). Profile
should be in the form of a text box, and a maximum of 2 pages, preferably in the format
developed by the forum for Collaborative HIV Research and the IWHOD Scientific Committee
(see http://www.hivforum.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=183&Itemid=92 or
contact IWHOD secretariat).

SCIENTIFIC COMMITTEE AND IWHOD ORGANISING COMMITTEE

The Scientific Committee ensures the program development and selection of presentations (oral and
posters) is transparent.

Scientific Committee: Antonella d’Arminio Monforte, Andrew Boulle, Dominique Costagliola, Bob Hogg,
Bruno Ledergerber, Jens D Lundgren, Andrew Phillips, Peter Reiss, Michael Saag and Veronica Miller
(Chairperson).

IWHOD organising committee: Genevieve Chene, Jesper Grarup, Christine Schwimmer.

SUMMARY: KEY IMMEDIATE ACTIONS NEEDED

¾ Please distribute this invitation within your study team.
¾ Please distribute this invitation to your contacts in HIV cohorts in resource limited countries.
¾ Make note of the abstract submission deadline: close of UK business (18:00 GMT) on Wednesday 9th
December 2009.

The workshop relies on your input and we hope the program is addressing issues relevant to you.

We are looking forward to next year’s meeting and we hope you will be able to participate in what looks to
be an exciting and stimulating program.

Sincerely,

Genevieve Chene, Jesper Grarup, Christine Schwimmer

on behalf of the Scientific Committee:

Veronica Miller (Chair IWHOD 2010)
Andrew Boulle
Dominique Costagliola
Antonella D’Arminio-Monforte
Bob Hogg
Bruno Ledergerber
Jens D Lundgren
Andrew Phillips
Peter Reiss
Mike Saag