[24] As a star and public figure, her involvement attracted enormous media attention to amfAR, and she made trips to Thailand, Japan, and Europe on the foundation’s behalf.

[25] Her testimony helped draw media attention, which built public support for the Comprehensive AIDS Resources Emergency (CARE) Act.

[28] Following the increased involvement of AIDS activists and patients with the drug approval process, Krim and Taylor testified before the National Institute of Health and Congress on the importance of clinical trials within community settings.

[30] Krim further shaped the structure of amfAR's fellowships, as she impelled the first grant of money to Peter Piot for his landmark study on female-to-male AIDS transmission in Kenya.

[31]"They felt that this was a disease that resulted from a sleazy lifestyle, drugs or kinky sex—that certain people had learned their lesson and it served them right," Krim told The New York Times Magazine in 1988.

Apart from aiding research for life saving drugs, Krim was equally a proponent of reshaping public opinion, as noted by The New York Times' tributes to her and those who interacted with her.

[44] Other recipients of the Mathilde Krim Fellowship such as Bing Chen[45] and Rosa Cardoso[46] have made discoveries that have been central to the modern understanding of the HIV virus.

In 2015 amfAR announced a collaboration with the University of California, San Francisco Medical School to create their first Institute for HIV Cure Research.

[56][61] In November 2020, amfAR signed an agreement with CytoDyn Inc. to explore the potential of its CCR-5 antagonist Vyrologix (Leronlimab) to mediate a functional HIV cure.

According to Kevin Robert Frost, Chief Executive Officer at amfAR, "demonstrating that Leronlimab can functionally phenocopy CCR5 deficiency and replicate the London and Berlin patients would be a major advancement.

[64] The two lead a team of 18 scientists to perform research in the area on topics such as mental healthcare access of people with HIV/AIDS in Asian countries[65] and the effect of new drugs on children with HIV.

[66] The TREAT Asia member countries are all partners of the US National Institutes of Health's International Epidemiological Databases to Evaluate AIDS (IeDEA) global cohort consortium.

[69] Unlike TREAT Asia, the GMT Initiative is truly global, with recent work in regarding their mentoring model in Paraguay, Thailand, Tajikistan and Kenya and Ukraine.

[69] The GMT Initiative further aims to spur outreach to low-income individuals by providing the amfAR HIV Scholars Program with the Center for LGBT Health Research at the University of Pittsburgh.

[70] The GMT Initiative aims to provide mentorship training to MSM and transgender individuals in countries with low access to AIDS support.

It created a mentoring model that empowers 'GMT' to connect with younger individuals with HIV/AIDS in spite of a potential homophobic and stigmatized environment in the low and middle income countries that they service.

[75] It was speculated that this decrease in funding was due to both the absence of its largest donor Harvey Weinstein, as well as the scandal surrounding the ousting of Kenneth Cole.

[76] Celebrities frequently donate items to be auctioned off for the foundation, and past donors have included Uma Thurman, Karlie Kloss and Milla Jovovich, among others.

[74] The 25th annual gala embraced the #MeToo movement, and was chaired by 25 prominent women on stage and screen, namely: Alessandra Ambrosio, Poppy Delevigne, Linda Evangelista, Sylvia Fendi, Aileen Getty, Kate Hudson, Scarlett Johansson, Milla Jovovich, Heidi Klum, Daphna Krim (daughter of Mathilde Krim), Karolina Kurkova, Sienna Miller, Angela Missoni, Mary Parent, Katy Perry, Natasha Poly, Aishwarya Rai, Vanessa Redgrave, Joely Richardson, Carine Roitfeld, Caroline Scheufele, Irina Shayk, Lara Stone, Donatella Versace, and Michelle Yeoh.

[73] Past items auctioned have included numerous photographs by Andy Warhol, Annie Leibovitz portrait sessions, stays in fashion moguls and celebrity houses and 53-karat diamond jewelry.

[79] Krim later used amfAR's research funding apparatus to help David Purchase begin a needle and syringe exchange program in Tacoma, Washington.

This report marked the first time that amfAR involved itself in economic policy that indirectly pertained to AIDS, and its rally against Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) reached national attention as a provision of the TPP that was traditionally seen to be benign.

[88][89] At amfAR's 22nd annual benefit in Cannes, France, in May 2015, Harvey Weinstein made a deal with amfAR chairman Kenneth Cole: Weinstein would auction off two items (one being a sitting with a famous fashion photographer and the second being tickets to a Hollywood film awards event) on the condition that $600,000 of the proceeds raised at the auction would be donated as a charitable gift to the American Repertory Theater.

In early 2016 the organization's board retained attorney Tom Ajamie to investigate the transaction, who concluded that Weinstein's failure to disclose all relevant information had exposed amfAR to material risks to its reputation if the deal had turned out to be illegal.

[90] In April 2017, 19 members of the Board of Trustees contacted the Attorney General to explain that Cole had proceeded with this deal in spite of the objections of the wider executive management team, as confirmed by their spokesperson Steven Goldberg.

Following legal struggles surrounding the benefit to private investors of charitable donations, Weinstein pushed amfAR to sign nondisclosure agreements that indicated no wrongdoing and no further probing.

As a result, four members (Mervyn Silverman, Vincent Roberti, Arlen Andelson and Jonathan Canno) refused to sign and went to petition the Attorney General on the impropriety of Kenneth Cole.

This letter was signed by Greg Louganis, an Olympic diver; Larry Kramer, playwright and activist and amfAR contributor Peter Staley, among others.

[92] Later, however, the attorney general's charity bureau sent a letter to the board on February 2, which exposed a proposal by Cole which allowed him to maintain his role as chairman in spite of new term limits.

[92] With the calls for resignation by many on the Board of Trustees, and a mandate from New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman's office, Cole announced his decision to step down at an amfAR gala on Wednesday, February 7, 2018.