From the Director: A Time of Transition

Dr. Annette Sohn, director of TREAT Asia.

March 2009— This past year has been a time of great transition for TREAT Asia. After joining the Bangkok office in September, we conducted a think tank on how to better link the HIV/AIDS community to the clinical establishment in a region where the social and cultural gaps between healthcare providers and patients often are wide. This emphasis on working more closely with the community carried through to our annual Network Meeting (see story below), where we set a number of creative and challenging programmatic priorities for 2009. In order to expand our involvement with the HIV/AIDS community, we added an additional community representative (see Voices, page 3) to the TREAT Asia Steering Committee.

As TREAT Asia's programs evolve, so too will our methods of communicating about our work. As you'll notice, this issue of the TREAT Asia Report launches a new design coupled with a new approach to some of our content. We're particularly honored in this issue to feature an interview with Dr. Peter Piot, former UNAIDS executive director, who reflects on his years as head of the world's most influential AIDS organization. This issue also includes a new section highlighting recent research of particular interest to the HIV/AIDS community (see pages 4–5). Our goal here is to present advances in the fields of prevention, treatment, and basic science that may otherwise be difficult for patients and families to hear about or understand. Your feedback and suggestions about these changes would be most welcome.

Finally, we would like to thank our donors, investigators, and partners for their continued commitment to supporting TREAT Asia. As we enter our ninth year as an international collaboration fighting HIV/AIDS in Asia, it is clear that our strength lies in our network and the people within it.
 

Annette Sohn, M.D.
Director, TREAT Asia