The first ever API National HIV Community Research Summit, organized by a groundbreaking collaboration of key representatives from research, policy, and community sectors, will summarize and build upon current behavioral, clinical, and epidemiological research on HIV/AIDS and associated co-factors and co-morbidities in the Asian and Pacific Islander American (APIA) community. The main objectives of the Research Summit are: ? 1. To bring together key representatives from the scientific, policy, and community sectors who share a common pursuit of addressing HIV/AIDS in the APIA community. ? 2. To summarize and cultivate a comprehensive understanding of the body of literature on HIV/AIDS in the APIA community to date. ? 3. To jointly develop an HIV research agenda for the APIA community for the next 10 years, including co-factors and co-morbidities, prevention and treatment. ? Topics to be covered during the conference will include: a summary of the epidemic within the API population in the US; health disparities with regard to access to prevention information, testing, and care; health disparities stemming from linguistic and cultural competency of healthcare providers; clinical/treatment issues; cofactors such as domestic violence and substance use; co-morbidities such as viral hepatitis, tuberculosis, and mental health; how co-morbidities are affected by immigration trends; how the epidemic within the APIA community is impacted and changing due to current immigration trends and policies; etc. A position paper laying out an APIA HIV/AIDS research agenda for the next decade will be developed as a result of this conference, to be widely distributed to relevant research, government/ policy, community, and funding sectors. A special edition of the AIDS Prevention Journal will also be dedicated to this paper and the topics covered by the summit. The ultimate aim of this summit is to increase understanding of HIV/AIDS in the APIA community and to decrease the current phenomena of lack of testing, underreporting, failure to diagnose HIV until the development of full-blown AIDS, and the absence of APIAs in HIV/AIDS research, that adversely affects the health of this community. ? ? ?
