Path forward. I think the fact that this conversation is so centered on history both in terms of the challenge well leave this program and watch the rest if you go to our website at cspan. Org. We take you live to discussion of former government officials and Health Advocate and emergency plan relief for aids in the last 20 years. Here on coverage of cspan2. They demonstrate the way to sustain Public Health issues and the greater resources and Better Health outcomes and improved foreign perception on u. S. Leadership. This is congress is so important. And intel brate ing celebrating key sectors of the military Faithbased Community and corporate that played a pivotal role in the passage and several representatives of these sectors today. Before we start, id like to acknowledge the bcc Public Health team led by hannah and also like to thank members of bbc tech star working group led by senator das shall recollects al and crist and the bill and Linda Gates Foundation and finally recognize the george w. Bush president ial center, which has been instrumental in advocating for the importance of this program. Earlier this year, bbc presented its patriot aword to president bush for as many contributions including and notably the establishment of the program. With that, ill turn it over to center for his opening remarks and then over to senator frisch. Thank you, its a real pleasure for me to be part of this important discussion today and i am thanking each of you for taking time to be part of this what is a very busy time for our country and for washington. We may be a desperate group, id like to believe that we all share a recognition of remarkable Success Story for Global Health and for our countrys national security. The president suck merged a plan in the relief and theres been an astounding success in large part to two fundamental cornerstones incredible record of bipartisanship and focus on sciencedriven intervention. Let me talk a moment about bipartisanship. Im fortunate to be one of the cofounders of the Bipartisan Policy Center and im delighted to be here today with my friend and republican counter part bill frist. Bipartisanship can seem very elusive almost impossible, particularly recently but couldnt be more vital for our nations continued survival. It is hard to find a better example of bipartisanship than ted barr. After ted barr was announced by president bush in 2003, it passed the senate by a vote and passed the house by overwhelming majority that was opposed and the program was first reauthorized and asked with overwhelping bipartisan support, 80 senators voted to support along with 308 members of the house and it was reauthorized a second time. It not only passed the senate by unanimous consent but it passed the house by a voice vote and third reauthorization followed the same pattern. So far ive noted the house and senate votes and i think its also important to highlight this legislation has been signed by a Bipartisan Group of president s too. By president george w. Bush to president obama and president trump. I think you can all appreciate how unusual that. S the reauthorization is due as we all know october 1 of this year, i am so hopeful well see the broad support for this violent program from the president and from both parties and for a second cornerstone, is this sciencedriven approach to the oppressive hiv aids crisis. This has really taken two for the purposes and first using proven interventions to reverse the course of the epidemic and second, collecting detailed data to track the programs outcomes and i was very pleased to see President Biden reaffirm this approach in recent release of the five year Strategic Plan. One of the plans Strategic Plan was simply follow the signs and includes mainstreaming, behavioral and social sciences into hiv programs and targeting the science to improve the program and utilizing the next generation of surveillance methods. Sciencebased approach has also provided us with great deal of data regarding those outcomes and i want to highlight a couple of the findings. First, according to the state department, petbar saved 25 million lives and think about that. 25 million. Thats more than all the people who currently live in florida. Through pepbar, approximately 50 million have received hiv services and thats all the living in pennsylvania, illinois and california. Pepfar resulted in 5. 5 million babies born hiv free. Thats the equivalent of saving all the babies born in the world for over two weeks. Congress and president turn to the rehorse of the program in the critical weeks, i hope they bear in mind the remarkable track of success and the cooperation and over the years a number of us in washington had the privilege of contributing to pepfars continuation and extraordinary legacy and i hope that come october s another generation of policymakers will join that group. With that, my pleasure to turn things over to my good friend bill frist. Thank you, tom. 20 years ago as Senate Majority leader, i worked closely with senator bush and members of both parties to enact pepfar and a whole cod ray of support o supporters on both sides of the aisle. It was faithbased communities and all members of the public and im please that had all the key supporters are represented in the discussion today. Put ago face on compassionate conservatism and it offered hope at a time when hope seemed lacking. Deeply establishing ties to the most vulnerable communities, faithbased organizations helped build trust and lead the charge and times the message of hope is tied not only to the message but to the mesosaenger. Faithbased organization haves consistently been indispensable mesosaenger. A diagnosis of hiv or aids was considered a death sentence resulting in millions and millions of deaths along with millions of aids orphans. Losing a parent is difficult, especially as a child. It can lean to economic insecurity and Community Health shocks and potential for societal destabilization. Lagouaiej r thats why it was critical for pepfar to step in and provide vital support. Support that helps the families provide political stability. Last year pepfar provided Critical Care and support to over 7 million orphans and Vulnerable Children and their caregivers. Think of them for chronic illnesses and maternal and chronic health. Following the Global Pandemic were all aware of it with devastating illness can only be a plane ride away and thus that investing in Global Health is also an investment in our health right here at home. And the impacts that pepfar stretch far beyond treating disease and in fact u. S. National security and economic and diplomatic objectives have all benefited. The small amount we actually spend on global help. Theyve create opportunities for their children without the worry of being struck down by an illness that can be prevented or cured to be blunt, you dont go to war with someone that saved delight of your child saved the life of your child. Local partnerships are leading up to the important efforts. Impresessed the latest includes sustainability for the cornerstone of response sots long standing benefits of this program can continue. Continue for generations to come. Thank you, senators, for your leadership and inspiring those important remarks. At this time, id like to introduce a healthcare reporter and shell be moderating todays discussion and shell be introducing them and then well start our discussion today. Thank you for that introduction and as he said, ill be moderating todays discussion. Please welcome general chuck walls, a retired four star u. S. Air force general and former Deputy Commander of the u. S. European command. Sean callihan, president and ceo of Catholic Services and betty chang, Vice President of medical affairs at Gilead Sciences and a physician. Thank you all for joining us today. Well be talk about next steps to the program nongovernment tat partnerships and any roadblocks that panelists see in reaching the goal and you can submit your own questions through the bpc hash tag and the youtube live chat and ill do my best to get as many of those answered during the program today as well. As Congress Gears up to authorize some portions of pepfar this year, id love to take a step back and talk about some of whats been accomplished so far and what lessons weve learned for this and other Global Health crises. To start off, this is a question for all of you or if one of you would like to start first. Peffar impact in reducing death and combating spread of hiv aids is often cited as Gold Standard with strong bipartisan support and tangible results. Looking forward, are there any specific things that you will be watching as Congress Deliberates how to reauthorize pepfar and if theres anything that sticks out to you or that youre watching to make sure progress does not derail . Well, i can start by saying that im going to be looking very closely to see if we still continue to have bipartisan support because i think it would be amazing that continues to happen and that something continues if not at the same rate and more so because of the impact theyve made is tremendous and you also have to take into act the effect covid has had and people have been very ingenuous about maximizing and stretching and finding new ways to provide care and we need to continue the momentum. I might just add to what debtty said and what betty said and the senator said and pepfar established a new paradigm in the competency and not only was there bipartisan here in the United States but the relationship between the Faithbased Community and nongovernmental organizations and local governments work hand in glove in addressing this issue and really on emergency footing, and i think it helped us respond to other crises such as ebola and as betty just mentioned, later our covid crisis. It really has been a launching board for new way of doing development and humanitarian response. Yeah, i might add its probably the very best program ive seen from the standpoint of showing what america really stands for in the world, number one, in Long Term Benefit and thats number two from a military peak spl perspective, we did a study in european command out there and we had africa in our area of responsibility and now its become a separate demand. But for every dollar we invest in foreign aid, usaid, we gain 16 in not having to deploy our troops some place in the world. If you look at afghanistan and iraq over the last 20 years, its in the trillions of dollars that we spent on military deployments. Ill talk a little bit later on why its important for the military but the militaries in africa have the same problem as any citizen and their militaries were tremendously helped by this program from the standpoint of readiness and helped the United States and very little known story. Number two is this is where i stop, i really have to give a lot of credit to senator frist and dashel with tremendous leadership on this issue and number two is im independent so this is not political statement, but president bush never takes enough credit for this program and i think its one of the most Important Programs that a president deployed during their tenure and he needs a lot of credit for that, tremendously important. My next question is for sean. The outreach that Catholic Relief Services has been doing is vital in reaching some of the most vulnerable populations in the country most affected by hiv and aids and im hoping you can talk a bit and tell us about how crs is able to build trust in and engage some local populations and connect them with resources and its going to be that more difficult or lessons to be learn there had and helpful for the future moving into the reauthorization process. Sure, and senator frist said hiv and aids was a death sentence for people who got it right away and thats no longer the case. It was at one time a case and the social fabric in many of the communities was torn and unwinding what the Faithbased Community did was come in and have the trust of the local community because the Faithbased Community is second only to the government in many countries and sometimes even more than the government in providing healthcare in many of the locations. There the people that saved your father when he was ill helped your wife when pregnant and took care of your child and they had the trust when protocols came out on what to do, we were looking at ways to make sure that people adopted those protocols and it was with these communities. Were now looking in the Development Field at increased localization. Well, it really started here in pepfar with the local communities talking to one another and Building Trust. As the general said, president bush deserves a lot of respect for this program because, you know, i had the opportunity of talking to him in january, and i said why did you really do it . And he said because it was the right thing to do. I think we have seen that its the right thing to do and Building Communities together, having governments recognize the faithbase and other participants in this have really helped. The most important word i would say in development is trust and Building Trust within the communities so they know people are there to assist them, not to take from them. And as i mentioned earlier, that helped us in protocols in other diseases as weve gone forward. That trust is really multifaucetted and general walz, bbc found the companies that received bigger per capita had higher leadership. Can you talk a little bit about some of the progress weve seen in building Global Health security both in strength and capacity for other diseases and preventing their spread to the u. S. Through the work through peffar. I would like to. Theres nothing bad about the program that i can even imagine such a small amount of money in relative terms but i give you a real quick anecdote that put it is in perspective for me. We would deploy to africa to help african militaries train to be more responsible and capable so they could actually take the a load of the work themselves to deploy u. S. Troops and one of the things wed do is provide glasses for people that had never had glasses before. The long story how they came about and we had a physicist and very simply for the individual and we gave out 35,000 pair of the glasses. Not to individuals weve seen before and glasses seeing clearly was a u. S. Flag down a soldiers arm. That type of thing goes a long way from the standpoint of goodwill for america and seeing the opposite in ukraine with what the russians are doing in an opposite way. And the United States doesnt take very much credit for some of the humanitarian around the world and impact of the countries and president will force. Were not doing it because of goodwill. Were doing it because they need to take care of their own countries in a better way. This program probably has been multiplied dozens of times from the standpoint of capability and countries like in africa that can now provide for the security of their own individuals. It has a tremendous impact in the United States, i guess we dont take enough credit for this but we are get ago huge again fit for every dollar spent from this program. The benefit of helping people and benefit to our own country and own security. I want to go to some of the innovations that weve seen intangent with this program. Dr. Chang, juliette has been instrumental in the fight against hiv through innovations through the medication to prevent and treat hiv. Theres been so much in the past 20 years thats happened with this program so i saw an estimated 16. 5 Million People with hiv in low and middle Income Countries are using a gilead treatment and whats the next step to ensuring treatments and prep get into the hands of key populations who are greatest at risk for hiv right now. Well, speaks of the impact pepfar has made and were grab rating in the Global Health organizations and what weve done bet they are time is work earlier and to include critical sites in subsackmary hasnt africa and were working in africa and uganda and south africa to make sure where this innovation is need seconddegree benefiting the people that needed is benefiting the people that need it the most. To have the collective accountability to Work Together and one of the many things we do including working on pediatric, harmonizing pediatric formulations and one question, theyre not an a gilead treatment, theyre on a treatment that was a result of innovation from gilead. Weve worked with the medicine patent pool to bring medicines and gilead was one of the first countries to submit as a medicine to the patent pool and this allowed Generic Companies to be able to use manufacturing abilities to use low coast, high quality medications and its just one of the regiments we make every day and access possible for millions of people. Id like to talk to all of you about the administrations about the plan to end hiv aids pandemic by 2030. Something ive noticed in my own reporting was in deploring that document and our work is not done and hiv remains a serious threat to Global