HIVMA honors outstanding achievements in HIV clinical education and research with 2026 awards

The HIV Medicine Association is pleased to recognize four members during IDWeek 2026 for their contributions to advancing the field of HIV medicine.

“The 2026 HIVMA award recipients have made extraordinary contributions to the field through their accomplishments in research, prevention, education and patient care,” said Anna K. Person, MD, FIDSA, chair of HIVMA. “It is a privilege to honor these courageous and compassionate leaders and celebrate their steadfast commitment to advancing high-quality care, groundbreaking research and equitable policies that bring us closer to ending the HIV epidemic.”

Transformative Leader Award: Frederick L. Altice, MD, MA

The Transformative Leader Award recognizes HIVMA members who have transformed the field through significant achievement in HIV clinical care, provider education, research or advocacy. This year’s honoree is Frederick L. Altice, MD, MA.

Dr. Altice is professor of medicine and public health at Yale University. Trained in infectious diseases and addiction medicine, he has devoted his career to transforming how care is delivered to people with HIV and those at greatest risk, particularly people who use drugs and people affected by incarceration, so that patients can access prevention and treatment without navigating fragmented and stigmatizing systems. 

He is internationally recognized for redesigning care around patients rather than requiring patients to navigate conventional health care settings. He established the first mobile medical clinic embedded in a syringe services program, developed the first academic–correctional health care delivery program and created one of the earliest community-based drug-checking services using Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy.

Dr. Altice has pioneered models combining HIV testing, antiretroviral therapy and pre-exposure prophylaxis with medications for opioid use disorder, hepatitis C virus treatment, mental health care, overdose prevention, syringe services, drug checking and social support. He has implemented them in mobile clinics, addiction treatment programs, correctional facilities, community organizations and street outreach. 

His work has helped redefine care for people who use drugs and people affected by incarceration. In place of fragile referrals between disconnected programs, his models bring evidence-based services together at the places and moments when patients can access them. His work has helped establish integrated, low-threshold care as a clinical, public health and health equity imperative.

As drug markets and patient needs have evolved, Dr. Altice has continued to develop new approaches, including harm reduction vending machines, home delivery of syringe services, mobile health interventions, digital decision-support tools, low-threshold treatment pathways and community drug checking to respond rapidly to an increasingly unpredictable drug supply. 

Dr. Altice has led more than 100 funded research and service-delivery initiatives and authored more than 600 scholarly publications. Across the United States and globally — including Malaysia, Ukraine, Peru and Central Asia — his work has focused on translating evidence into scalable, practical systems of care through innovative regional training programs in implementation science. 

He is founding director of the Yale Center for Clinical and Community Research, a founding member of the Center for Interdisciplinary Research on AIDS and an inaugural member of the Global Health Justice Partnership. He has mentored generations of clinicians, researchers and implementation scientists in the U.S. and worldwide. 

HIVMA is proud to honor Dr. Altice with the 2026 HIVMA Transformative Leader Award.

Adaora Adimora Citation Award: Donna E. Sweet, MD

The Adaora Adimora Citation Award honors the late Adaora Adimora, MD, MPH, FIDSA, a past chair of HIVMA and member of the IDSA Board of Directors, for her service, unwavering commitment and leadership in advancing health equity through research, education and advocacy. The award recognizes exemplary contributions or service to HIVMA as well as advancing efforts to end HIV as an epidemic, such as through social justice and public service. This year, HIVMA honors Donna E. Sweet, MD, with this award.

Dr. Sweet, a professor in the Department of Internal Medicine at the University of Kansas School of Medicine-Wichita, is a titan in the field of HIV. Throughout her four-decade career, Dr. Sweet has combined an unwavering commitment to patient-centered care with a steadfast dedication to advancing health equity. She has been a tireless advocate for LGBTQ+ rights, women’s health and the meaningful involvement of people with HIV in program design.

In the late 1980s, Dr. Sweet became one of the first to respond when HIV first appeared in Kansas and started the first Ryan White-funded clinic in the state. Because Kansas has not expanded its Medicaid program, she created a charity — the Sweet Emergency Fund — to provide wraparound services for her patients who fall outside of Ryan White funding and Medicaid/Medicare.

Dr. Sweet established the Kansas AIDS Education and Training Center and served as principal investigator for Ryan White programs that have provided comprehensive care to thousands of patients. Her work has been particularly transformative for underserved populations in rural communities, where she has built sustainable infrastructure for HIV prevention, treatment and education in areas with limited resources and significant stigma.

Dr. Sweet is principal investigator and clinical director of the Midwest AIDS Education and Training Center serving Kansas and Nebraska as well as director of Kansas Care Through Housing.

As chair of the CDC/HRSA Advisory Committee on HIV and STD Prevention and Treatment from 2007 to 2011, and a past chair of the American Academy of HIV Medicine, Dr. Sweet has shaped national HIV policy and workforce development. Her advocacy has consistently centered on eliminating the structural barriers that perpetuate health disparities in HIV care.

HIVMA is pleased to honor Dr. Sweet with a 2026 HIVMA Adimora Citation Award.

Innovator Award: Jason E. Zucker, MD, MS

The Innovator Award recognizes HIVMA members in early- or mid-career who have made outstanding and original contributions to HIV medicine in clinical care, provider education, research or advocacy. The 2026 recipient is Jason E. Zucker, MD, MS.

Dr. Zucker is a rigorous investigator and a true innovator in the field of HIV and sexually transmitted infections. He is an assistant professor of medicine and pediatrics at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons; principal investigator and co-medical director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention-funded New York City STI/HIV Prevention Training Center; director of Project STAY, a sexual health program for adolescents and young adults in New York City; and lead for emerging technologies in clinical research in the Columbia Department of Medicine.

He has worked on projects to build machine learning and natural language processing models that identify individuals most in need of HIV prevention services, along with real-time dashboards and learning health system surveillance that surface disparities in HIV and STI care. That work showed where opportunities for testing and prevention were being missed and led to an iterative series of studies evaluating ways to close those gaps.

Those studies include individualized provider feedback that increased HIV screening in the emergency department, included in both the CDC’s compendium of HIV prevention interventions and the Health Resources and Services Administration’s Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program Best Practices Compilation. They also include provider nudges to increase pre-exposure prophylaxis discussions (Get2PrEP), digital tools to sustain PrEP adherence (Stick2PrEP) and a patient decision aid for emergency department STI testing (STIckER), now advancing to a 13-site randomized trial.

As principal investigator of the Doxy4STICare study, Dr. Zucker is generating evidence on the equitable integration of doxycycline post-exposure prophylaxis into sexual health care as well as its impact on antimicrobial resistance.

When mpox emerged in the U.S. in 2022, Dr. Zucker shared templates and protocols based on his experience in New York City, and cared for patients while leading a cross-disciplinary platform that integrated clinical, epidemiologic and behavioral data to inform patient care and national treatment guidance. As one of the vice chairs of the ACTG Study of Tecovirimat for Mpox, or STOMP, he helped lead the trial from concept to first enrollment in nine weeks. When the trial drew scrutiny and public debate, Dr. Zucker engaged those challenges with grace and an unwavering commitment to the scientific process. The results were published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2026.

Across this work, Dr. Zucker innovates by bringing together informatics, behavioral science and implementation science: informatics to identify where the HIV and STI cascade of care is missing people, behavioral science to design interventions with patients and clinicians, and implementation science to test and scale them.

HIVMA is pleased to honor Dr. Zucker with the HIVMA Innovator Award in 2026. 

Honorary Innovator Award: Lauren F. Collins, MD, MSc, FIDSA 

This year, HIVMA is also awarding an Honorary Innovator Award to Lauren F. Collins, MD, MSc, FIDSA.

Dr. Collins, a tireless advocate for patients and a respected leader whose work helped reduce barriers to care, is being recognized posthumously with an Honorary Innovator Award. During her tenure as a researcher and clinician at Emory School of Medicine and Grady Memorial Hospital and Ponce de Leon Center, Dr. Collins, who died in January 2026, combined exceptional clinical care with innovative research to advance equitable, person-centered HIV treatment.  

Upon joining the faculty at Emory in 2020, Dr. Collins emerged as a national leader in HIV clinical research and implementation. She published a series of landmark studies focused on aging-related comorbidities, particularly among women, with the goal of mitigating their impact and promoting healthy aging in people with HIV.  

As founder and medical director of the Grady Ponce de Leon Center’s Long-Acting Antiretroviral Therapy Program, Dr. Collins designed novel workflows, built interdisciplinary teams, developed population health tools and created scalable protocols that enabled long-acting therapies to reach individuals historically excluded from such advances, including patients with viremia, complex social needs and pregnancy. Under Dr. Collins’ leadership, the Ponce LA ART program grew to be the largest single-site clinical program in the country. 

Dr. Collins presented her innovative work in LA ART implementation and served as an invited speaker at IDWeek and other major conferences. She served as principal investigator of a CDC U01 mixed-methods study leveraging a multisite women’s health research cohort and robust academic-community partnerships to explore HIV treatment preferences and implementation in the LA ART era among Southern Black women and service providers. She was also co-investigator of an R01 multisite collaboration assessing stakeholder perspectives on optimizing LA ART implementation.  

A beloved mentor, teacher and advisor to students, residents, fellows, staff and junior faculty, Dr. Collins served as the HIVMA representative for the American College of Clinical Pharmacy Consensus Statement on the use of LA antiretroviral medications for HIV treatment and prevention (published in 2024). She also co-authored 2025 policy recommendations by IDSA/HIVMA in this area. 

HIVMA is pleased to honor Dr. Collins with an Honorary HIVMA Innovator Award. Her scientific contributions, leadership and spirit will have a lasting impact on HIV care for generations to come. 

For full award descriptions, recipient biographies and information about awards given to HIVMA members this year, please visit the HIVMA website.

About HIVMA
The HIV Medicine Association is a community of nearly 6,000 health care professionals who advance a comprehensive and humane response to the HIV pandemic, informed by science and social justice. HIVMA works to increase access to health care services and coverage for people with HIV and populations heavily impacted by HIV and to foster a robust, diverse and culturally competent HIV workforce. HIVMA is part of the Infectious Diseases Society of America. Visit hivma.org to learn more.