Emerging future issues in HIV/AIDS social research

Peter Piot (Executive Director of UNAIDS) challenged Bangkok International AIDS Conference attendees to think ahead 10 years or more so we will be prepared to meet the challenges that will face us. Over this next decade, many formidable challenges are likely to stem from the interactions of social, ecological, political, and economic change; existing social structures; the changing HIV epidemic, and changes produced by emerging biomedicine and viral evolution. Although some challenges will be unpredictable, we should plan ahead for those we are able to anticipate. This paper identifies important social research issues regarding the changing global epidemic so funding agencies, journal editors, social science communities, individual researchers and students, non-governmental organizations, communitybased organizations, and the general public can debate them and, hopefully, act on them.