Dear All,
The organizers would like to thank all of you for the grand success of the conference. We thank all who attended and who could not attended for their full support and blessings for the conference. Here with we are uploading the presentations of the conference - click here - regards Conference Organizers.
Please keep on mailing to conferenceorganizers@icrw.org and remain connected.
ICRW, ICR, PHFI and NIAAA Announce the
Second International Conference on
Alcohol and HIV: Insights from Interventions
28 - 30 September 2010
India Habitat Centre, New Delhi
The Second International Conference on Alcohol and HIV will highlight evaluated prevention programs, intervention research and national policies that address the links between alcohol and HIV, and are focused on risk reduction. A special emphasis of this year's conference is the role of gender norms that can elevate HIV-related risks for both women and men especially in the presence of alcohol. Multilevel approaches will be favored since it is now widely recognized that individual level intervention strategies to reduce alcohol consumption and/or sexual risk are not sustainable. The conference will bring together program specialists and researchers from India and neighboring South Asian countries as well as U.S. researchers working in India. The outcomes will be guidelines for improved alcohol-related HIV risk reduction strategies appropriate for India and the region and an intervention research agenda for future work in the field.
Current research suggests that alcohol use, like sexual risk behavior, is deeply embedded in gendered behaviors and norms. These norms, as well as the important role alcohol production and its sale play in producing revenue, pose challenges to effective programming.
The increased rate of alcohol consumption in India is among the highest in South Asia, raising the potential of increased sexual risk taking and the subsequent spread of sexually transmitted infections, including HIV, and social harm, including violence. India also has the second largest number of HIV infections in the world. Literature recognizes that "single sector" approaches alone will not be effective in combating either pervasive alcohol use or HIV transmission. Sensitive community-based, community-controlled and evaluated approaches to mediating alcohol use and its relationship to unprotected sex should be undertaken in India with communities, including men, women, and families affected by alcohol, community organizations, distributors, media and providers.
The First International Conference on Alcohol and HIV, organized by ICR and the International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS) took place in Mumbai, India in 2009. Evidence from this conference demonstrated the complex role alcohol plays in enhancing the potential for unprotected sex among married and unmarried men; clients of commercial sex workers; commercial sex workers themselves, and migrant workers in different areas of India. Evidence from this conference also highlighted the role that alcohol plays in contributing to risky sexual behaviors and related disease transmission.
Keynote addresses and papers will highlight the work of regional prevention research scientists, and Indian-U.S. research partnerships, practitioners with evaluated programs or running programs with potential for evaluation, and policymakers. Researchers working in the field of alcohol, sexual risk and HIV are invited to submit their abstract for a maximum of two sessions on topics related to the conference themes.