This U13 Conference Proposal entitled """"""""Alcohol, Sexuality and HIV Research and Prevention in India"""""""" requests support for two international seminars that will bring together Indian and American researchers to review and present existing research results on the intersection of alcohol use and HIV in India and initiate discussions on the development of a national research agenda on this topic. The proposal represents a cooperative agreement between the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, and Indian and U.S. research institutions to build a national research and policy platform that addresses the role of alcohol in fueling the AIDS epidemic in India. It occurs at a time when critical factors converge in both countries including the call for improvements in HIV research infrastructure in India, India's high potential for rapid increases in HIV, dramatically accelerating rates of alcohol consumption, a new U.S.-Indo agreement to conduct jointly funded HIV research and NIAAA's interest in international collaborations around reducing alcohol related HIV risks. The seminars aim to provide an opportunity for U.S. and Indian HIV and alcohol researchers to share information, collaborate and construct joint studies and test conceptual models, to build research capacity and to engage NIAAA as a contributor to an Indian national multilevel interdisciplinary research agenda focused on alcohol, risk behavior and HIV. The first seminar will focus on epidemiology, history and descriptive studies, and will be held in Mumbai in 2008;the second will address intervention science methodology and results of intervention research on alcohol and HIV in India, and will be held in Delhi in 2009. Collaborating organizations include the Institute for Community Research and the University of Connecticut Health Center (U.S.), the International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS), and the International Center for Research on Women (Delhi), with coordinating input from the Indian Council for Medical Statistics and the All-India Institute for Medical Sciences (AIIMS). A coordinating committee consisting of senior researchers from all of these institutions will finalize the seminars and support publications in peer reviewed journals.
