Introduction to the Special Issue: Promoting global healtheTreatment and prevention of substance abuse and HIV in Asia

This special issue documents the first meeting of the biennial Conference Series to Promote Global Health, which was held on April 17e19, 2013, in Taipei, Taiwan. The conference series is sponsored by the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the US National Institutes of Health, and the first meeting was organized by the UCLA Center for Advancing Longitudinal Drug Abuse Research (CALDAR), the Taiwan National Health Research Institute (NHRI), and the Taiwan Food and Drug Administration (TFDA). The theme of the first conference was prevention and treatment of substance abuse and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection, focusing on Asia and the Pacific Islands (API).

Articles in this special issue are organized into three sections. Section 1 consists of nine articles providing highlights from selected conference sessions. Section 2 includes five articles describing the current status of drug abuse and HIV in five Asian countries (China, Japan, Malaysia, Taiwan, and Vietnam) reported by their representatives. Section 3 has 15 articles, with the first 14 based on individual presentations at the conference. The final article summarizes priority research topics generated by workgroups, which will form the basis for planning future international collaborative research on the prevention and treatment of substance use and HIV infection, in order to promote health in API and other populations.

Drug use persists as a major problem that severely impacts the health of individuals and populations, both locally and globally. The international Conference Series to Promote Global Health is designed to promote the sharing of research findings on substance abuse treatment and HIV prevention,stimulate international collaborations, particularly between the United States and API countries, and inform cultural aspects of the treatment and prevention of substance abuse and HIV infection. These and upcoming activities are part of the efforts to promulgate research-based interventions to improve health services and promote health globally.

Yih-Ing Hser*,1
Integrated Substance Abuse Programs, Department of Psychiatry
and Biobehavioral Sciences, David Geffen School of Medicine,
University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA

Wen-Ing Tsay1
Division of Controlled Drugs, Food and Drug Administration,
Ministry of Health and Welfare, Taipei, Taiwan

Yun Wang1
Center for Neuropsychiatric Research, National Health Research
Institutes, Miaoli, Taiwan

Betty Tai1
Center for Clinical Trials Network, National Institute on Drug
Abuse, Bethesda, MD, USA

*Corresponding author. 1:Co-editors of this special issue.