In recognition of National HIV Vaccine Awareness Day, May 18, the HVTN is excited to launch its Red Ribbon Registry which enables volunteers across the US to join a community of individuals ready help end HIV through the discovery of a preventive HIV vaccine.

On the website, HelpEndHIV.org, volunteers can learn about HIV and progress in vaccine research. Those who are interested in joining a study can complete a survey to join the Red Ribbon Registry, enabling them and sign up to be contacted by clinical research sites about studies in their area for which they could be a good fit.

The fight against HIV has progressed thanks to long-standing collaboration between researchers and community members. With the Red Ribbon Registry and our national advertising campaign, we continue to invite a new generation of community members into the process as important partners in the advancement of science and the ending of suffering and death from HIV-related illnesses. 

The Red Ribbon Registry is built upon the same platform provided pro bono to the COVID-19 Prevention Network by Oracle for the rapid recruitment of volunteers for the US COVID-19 vaccine studies. The registry is a cloud-based system that helps accelerate the clinical study enrollment process by making it easy for anyone to volunteer by completing a questionnaire from their desktop or mobile device. Researchers can then analyze volunteer data and contact nearby volunteers to tell them about available clinical trials, and potentially enroll them in a study for which they are eligible.

Oracle and HVTN have been working on improvements to the platform over the last year, including features to allow sites to manage users more autonomously, simplifying the set-up of a geographic catchment area to see the number of available volunteers within that area, and improving accessibility to volunteers’ survey answers to cut down on pre-screening time for site staff and volunteers.