A Thai doctor whose work helped reshape how HIV prevention and treatment services reach some of the communities most affected by the virus has received a regional public health award from the World Health Organization.
Dr. Nittaya Phanuphak, executive director of Bangkok’s Institute of HIV Research and Innovation (IHRI), was named one of three recipients of the WHO South-East Asia Regional Award 2026 for Public Health Champions.
WHO recognized Dr. Nittaya for more than 25 years of work in HIV prevention, clinical research, and service delivery, including the development of community-led approaches that have influenced HIV policy and practice in Thailand and elsewhere in the Asia-Pacific region.
She shared this year’s recognition with Dr. K. Suresh Kumar of India, recognized for his work in community-based palliative care, and Nepal Netra Jyoti Sangh, an eye-care organization in Nepal.
The award, now in its second year, recognizes individuals and institutions whose work has produced significant and lasting improvements in public health across WHO’s South-East Asia Region. The three recipients were selected from 102 nominations based on criteria including public health impact, innovation, scalability, sustainability, and equity.
Bringing HIV care closer to the community
Source: IHRI Official Website
A recurring idea in Dr. Nittaya’s work has been relatively simple: HIV services are more likely to reach people if the communities they are intended for have a role in designing and providing them.
That thinking helped shape Thailand’s Key Population-Led Health Services (KPLHS) model, which addresses gaps in HIV testing, prevention, and treatment among populations disproportionately affected by HIV.
Under the model, services are designed around needs identified by the communities themselves and delivered by trained lay providers, who are often members of those communities, working in partnership with public health facilities.
Instead of requiring every service to take place in a traditional hospital setting, community-based organizations can offer services in locations and at hours that are more accessible to their clients. Trained providers can deliver services including HIV counseling and testing, sexually transmitted infection services, and access to pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) and post-exposure prophylaxis (PEP).
The model has since become a significant part of Thailand’s HIV response. A 2022 paper co-authored by Dr. Nittaya reported that KPLHS accounted for 55% of HIV testing among key populations in Thailand in 2018 and 82% of current PrEP users among key populations in 2021.
Dr. Nittaya also pioneered Princess PrEP, which WHO describes as an innovative model for expanding access to HIV prevention. The program became Thailand’s first key population-led model to provide PrEP to key populations through members of those communities themselves.
HIV care designed for vulnerable groups
Another part of Dr. Nittaya’s work has focused specifically on transgender health.
In 2015, she helped establish the Tangerine Community Health Clinic, which WHO describes as the first transgender-led clinic in the Asia-Pacific region.
The Bangkok clinic combines sexual health services with gender-affirming care in one place. Led by trained transgender personnel and gender-sensitive health care staff, Tangerine provides HIV and sexually transmitted infection testing and treatment, PrEP and PEP, gender-affirming hormone treatment, neovagina care, and vaccinations for hepatitis A and B and HPV.
Source: IHRI Official Website
The approach addresses a problem that can be easy to overlook in conventional health systems: people do not necessarily experience their health needs as separate issues belonging to different clinics.
For transgender clients, that means HIV prevention and sexual health care can be provided alongside services they may already be seeking, rather than treating them as unrelated needs.
WHO said Dr. Nittaya’s work has helped expand access to HIV prevention and treatment for key populations and has informed Thailand’s national HIV policies as well as regional and global guidance.
Her work on community-led care has also extended beyond individual clinics. Advocacy by IHRI and partner organizations contributed to a 2019 regulatory change allowing trained key-population lay providers to deliver certain HIV services under professional oversight, creating a formal pathway for community providers to participate in Thailand’s health system.
Dr. Nittaya received the recognition alongside this year’s other Public Health Champions during the 79th Session of the WHO Regional Committee for South-East Asia in Dili, Timor-Leste, in September.
Paul Rujopakarn