Date: Sunday 17th November 2013
Time: 8:30 – 17:30
Location: Queen Sirikit National Convention Center (QSNCC)
FREE of charge! and You’ll receive a fabulous goody bag from APCOM.org
Get ready for ICAAP11, by attending APCOM’s pre-conference event, ‘FOREPLAY: The final push towards the Three Zeros’. Take this opportunity to connect with other community members, researchers, and other multi-lateral agencies and be part of the discussion pertinent to develop effective programmes, services and strategies that respond to the specific circumstances and needs at the individual country level. FOREPLAY offers an opportunity for researchers, practitioners and programmers to share knowledge, and coordinate their efforts to stop the further expansion of this epidemic. There has never been a more crucial time.
APCOM proudly presents FOREPLAY, focusing on latest updates in Asia and the Pacific region and developing approaches to address the needs of men who have sex with men (MSM) and transgender people. In Asia and the Pacific, sex between men accounts for approximately 30% of new HIV transmissions. In Asia alone, it is estimated that by 2015, up to 40% of new transmissions will occur as a result of male to male sex – a marked rise from 13% in 2008. HIV rates among transgender people are disturbingly high, ranging from 49% in Delhi, India to 11% in Bangkok, Thailand and 34% in Jakarta, Indonesia.
International AIDS Society President-elect, Dr. Chris Beyer, will open the event with a keynote address and open plenary session. Dr. Beyer is associate director of the Johns Hopkins University (JHU) Center for AIDS Research and the JHU Center for Global Health. In 2014, he will take up the role as President of the International AIDS Society – the world’s largest body of HIV professionals. In 2012 he was awarded an honorary Doctorate from Chiang Mai University, in recognition of his 20 years of HIV research in Thailand, which included five years as the Field Director for the PAVE and HIVNET studies. As such, he brings extensive knowledge and experience with efforts to address the HIV epidemic in this region. Attendees of FOREPLAY will have the opportunity to benefit from this knowledge via his keynote address on ‘MSM in Asia: what evidence is out there?’
APCOM will also present findings from its regional scoping paper on MSM and transgender people. Other plenaries will provide information on: new research on transgender populations from the islands of Southeast Asia; and legal approaches to MSM and transgender populations, based on information from the Global Commission on HIV and the Law.
Attendees will also be able to engage on areas of particular interest to them through thematic satellite sessions on: young MSM and transgender people; innovations in Information and Communications Technology and social media; law, policy and Human Rights; MSM and drug use; Transgender people; MSM and transgender people living with HIV.
Join us and engage with the key issues and key skills building sessions of pertinence to the main conference. We invite everyone, including health educators, policy makers, community leaders and network organisers, and look forward to welcoming you to FOREPLAY.
