A Decade of Public-Health Digital Infrastructure for FHI 360
Two of the world's leading HIV-prevention and treatment research networks needed digital platforms that could carry their public-facing mission, serve researchers across the globe (often on limited bandwidth), and stay rock-solid through a decade of ongoing public-health work.
Across more than ten years and twenty-three task orders, we rebuilt the HPTN and IMPAACT websites twice each, sustained both with continuous security and feature support, and grew the engagement into a long-term stewardship arrangement that bridges builds rather than starting from zero between them.
Two mission-critical research platforms kept healthy, modern, and accessible across two full redesigns and a continuous decade of security and maintenance work. HPTN and IMPAACT now share a stable Drupal foundation, a global-bandwidth-aware front end, and a partner who knows both systems end-to-end.
FHI 360 is one of the world’s largest public-health and human-development nonprofits, and its research networks — HPTN, IMPAACT — sit at the front line of HIV prevention and treatment science. For more than a decade we have built and sustained the public-facing digital infrastructure for both networks, across two full redesigns each and a continuous run of security, performance, and feature work behind them.
It started with a homepage
Our first major engagement with HPTN was scoped tightly — not a comprehensive redesign, but the homepage. HPTN wanted to give visitors a stronger sense of who they are, what they study, and where in the world that work happens, without disturbing the broader site architecture.
We narrowed in on user experience and content priority, structuring the homepage as a story for an unfamiliar visitor: who HPTN is, what’s unique about their community, where they operate, what research they’re conducting. We extended a subtle gradient hidden in their logo into headers, arrows, and overlays — a way to refresh the look without breaking from the brand. “Community” became the through-line; the design and copy both leaned into it.
That focused engagement set the tone for everything that followed.
A mobile-first HPTN rebuild on Drupal
When the network was ready for a full rebuild, they came back to us. We worked with HPTN stakeholders on a responsive design — flexible layouts, flexible images, media queries — built mobile-first specifically because a substantial portion of their visitors come from low-bandwidth regions, often on tablets or phones.
We helped them evaluate CMS options and landed on Drupal 8. During the build we leaned on Drupal’s content entities to pull data from their legacy systems, and combined Drupal and external caching mechanisms to keep delivery fast even when the underlying queries weren’t. The end state: modern, mobile-friendly, easy to maintain — and visibly different from the desktop-first platform they had before.
Extending the partnership to IMPAACT
IMPAACT — FHI 360’s other clinical-trials network — had been running on a hand-maintained site only two staff members could touch. Content was formatted ad hoc; older content was hard to update; the site wasn’t responsive at all. Getting them onto a CMS was step one.
We combed through IMPAACT’s database during discovery and surfaced an opportunity to standardize the connections between records, making them sortable and searchable. The new Drupal build came together alongside a brand refresh, with a flexible design system that grew from the new logo and palette. We re-architected the homepage from a directory into a story — custom modules elevating content out of the depths of the site to communicate IMPAACT’s mission directly.
Because IMPAACT’s research happens in remote locations with subpar broadband, we paid hard attention to performance. Studies — the cornerstone of the site — were structured as tabs whose data isn’t queried until the tab is clicked, so a researcher on a slow connection isn’t paying to load content they didn’t ask for. The site also went bilingual: English and Spanish, with the IMPAACT Community Advisory Board director (previously running a “website within a website”) finally able to manage their own section without a developer in the loop. The redesigned site was later named one of the best nonprofit websites by DesignRush.
A decade of continuous support
What followed is the work most agencies don’t talk about: ongoing security support, maintenance, and steady enhancements. HPTN has been on continuous support since 2017; IMPAACT since 2020. Across more than twenty task orders we have kept both networks’ platforms patched, performant, and quietly improving year over year.
In 2024 we returned to HPTN for a second full redesign and rebuild — the biggest single piece of FHI 360 work in the relationship — refreshing the platform that had served the network well since 2015 for the realities of the next decade. IMPAACT’s 2025–2027 support and enhancements work is underway alongside it.
What ten years of partnership has built
By staying in the work — through builds, between builds, after builds — we have become the partner that knows HPTN and IMPAACT from the database schema up. Two of FHI 360’s research networks have a stable Drupal foundation, a bandwidth-aware front end, and a continuous roadmap that hasn’t required restarting the relationship every time the platform needed to evolve.
Leadership loves the new website. They had zero concerns or commentary other than being impressed. Awesome, guys.
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