TAG was formed thirty years ago in January 1992 by a group of HIV activists from the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP)/New York and its Treatment and Data Committee.
TAG’s cofounders — Barbara Hughes, Garance Franke-Ruta, Gregg Gonsalves, Peter Staley and Mark Harrington among them — believed it was essential to form a community organization with a full-time focus on speeding up AIDS research, advocating for increased funding, and ensuring that people with HIV and at risk for it had access to and information about treatments that could save their lives.
In those dark days at the height of the AIDS crisis, few could have imagined just how much TAG would help to revolutionize the field. In its early years, TAG pushed to overhaul clinical trials to produce quicker and more reliable answers about whether new drugs and combinations actually worked. By 1996, that activism led to the breakthrough discovery that combination HIV treatment could reduce viral load to undetectable levels, protecting health and prolonging life.
TAG co-founders Mark Harrington, Gregg Gonsalves, and Spencer Cox launch TAG’s “AIDS Research at the NIH: A Critical Review” at the VIII International Conference on AIDS, Amsterdam, July 22, 1992.
Over the following decade, TAG fought alongside allies around the world to achieve universal access to affordable life-saving treatments everywhere they were needed, including in developing countries that are home to over 95% of people living with HIV.
Today, thanks in part to TAG’s efforts, over 40 HIV drugs and combination therapies have been approved by the FDA. Twenty five million people with HIV around the world are now receiving combination treatment – but thirty years after TAG’s founding, we still don’t have a cure or a vaccine for HIV.
Throughout 2022, we’ll be honoring three decades of action, advocacy, and achievements that have transformed the lives and prognoses of people living with HIV, viral hepatitis (HCV) and tuberculosis (TB). We’ll show you how our past has formed our Mission, Vision, and Values as we move forward.
We couldn’t have made it to this point without your dedication and support. Time and again you’ve advanced our work and our mission through solidarity and generosity. As we kick-off our 30th anniversary, we hope that you’ll consider supporting TAG as we continue our vital work.
We look forward to sharing more of our history, and updating this page with the stories of the amazing people who have fought for their own health and for the health of others.
TAG’s ED Mark Harrington, (3rd from right front) in 2006 at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. He was there to attend a meeting of the Core Group of the Stop TB Partnership TB/HIV Working Group (he was a member since 2003). Mark presented on HIV treatment literacy and how it could be applied to empowering communities affected by TB. Four years after this picture was taken, the Botusa trial of isoniazid preventive therapy reported results; TAG covered the WHO expert meeting on those results in this piece.
From TAG Update, Spring 2002: An interview with TAG’s first-ever full-time Basic Science Project Director, Richard Jefferys. Richard has been at TAG ever since, and is now Basic Science, Vaccines, and Cure Project Director.
From TAG Update, December 2008: TAG executive director Mark Harrington addressed the XVII International AIDS Conference 2008 in Centro Banamex, Mexico City, August 8, 2008. Photo credit: International AIDS Society/Mondaphoto.
From TAG Update December, 2014: TAG’s Jeremiah Johnson joined ACT UP and allies outside Bellevue Hospital in New York City to demand evidence-based policies that support health care workers fighting Ebola. (Future TAG staff member Annette Guadino is standing in middle)