Winner of 2026 Cesar Augusto Caceres Award for Innovations in HIV Prevention and Care Announced

WASHINGTON, DC: The American Academy of HIV Medicine and the Institute for Technology in Health Care have awarded the 2026 Cesar Augusto Caceres Award for Innovations in HIV Prevention and Care to Tyler B. Evans, MD, MS, MPH, DTM&H, FIDSA, of the Wellness Equity Institute. The award acknowledges outstanding contributions to HIV care and prevention and the advancement of health care through the creative use and application of technology.

Dr. Evans’s initiative uses an outreach model driven by artificial intelligence (AI) to proactively identify patients who are at highest risk of falling out of care, such as people with housing insecurity, those facing poverty, and patients who are struggling with mental health or substance use. The lightweight AI model is embedded within the Wellness Equity Institute’s electronic health record to generate a lost-to-care risk index based on patient-level data, including missed viral load labs, antiretroviral therapy adherence patterns, appointment history, behavioral health indicators, and social determinants of health (such as housing instability). These predictive insights are then operationalized through “predictive street rounds,” where outreach teams prioritize engagement with individuals most at risk of falling out of care.

“It is an honor to receive this award and to be recognized for the contributions this technology will make to HIV patient care,” says Dr. Evans. “The funding from the Caceres Award will help ensure that we can continue the program and positively affect the lives of our patients. Making sure all patients – regardless of their socioeconomic status – can have sustained engagement in HIV care is critical to their long-term health and wellbeing.”

The Wellness Equity Institute’s initiative represents a paradigm shift from reactive to predictive HIV outreach by leveraging machine learning to identify and engage people who are at the highest risk of disengagement in health care. By embedding real-time risk stratification directly into street medicine workflows, the project operationalizes data-driven, equity-focused intervention in one of the most complex and underserved care environments. The goals are to improve retention in HIV care among high-risk populations, increase rates of viral suppression, and reduce disparities in HIV outcomes among marginalized populations.

In its fifteenth year, the Cesar Augusto Caceres Award for Innovations in HIV Prevention and Care seeks to promote efficacious innovations developed in clinical settings that are designed to prevent, treat and care for people with or at risk of HIV. The award honors the legacy of Dr. Cesar Caceres, founder of the Institute for Technology in Health Care.

Dr. Evans will be hosting an Academy webinar within the next year to discuss his program’s research, outcomes, key lessons learned, and how other providers and health care systems could adopt this model of care to improve patient engagement and outcomes.