Here is a cogent comment from Paul Causey on the posting on 2 July [him] 2184 about “Where to from here? Identifying gaps in social research for future development of strategic information”. http://apcom.org/sites/default/files/ScopingPaper_WhereToFromHere.pdf

I will post almost anything anyone sends me, with or without a name. Paul's name is used with his permission.

Jamie

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Glad you noticed that the paper is already a year old. Sad but...

Of course I would say yes, it's worth reading as I was recently honored to facilitate a meeting of the "APCOM Knowledge Reference Group", AKRG, and included stakeholders, which includes and is mostly driven by the Social Research Advisory Committee. We reviewed progress and set priorities of the AKRG's 5 working groups on MSM/TG knowledge base that include, along with social research, faith, health sector, communications and ITC, and human rights.

But honestly, I think that paper is excellent as a review, all that was asked of the author, Ben Bavinton. While I had the same question as you (WHY?? ), I think it's not really that important as much as what's going to be done about it. The why may be obvious: ignorance along with prejudice, stigma and discrimination. I do believe that paper fails to mention that while "little exists", what does now exist is 20 times (I'm guessing) more than existed when we all first started to strategically push from more attention to HIV amongst MSM and transgender people in this region Asia and the Pacific, 2006 and then since 2007, when APCOM was launched.

There is a second, more recent scoping paper yet to be released as well but will be soon, I hope. It is much thicker and very academic; partly what is delaying it. Another consultant has been engaged to create a summary brief and training tool based on it. All will be released together, hopefully by the fall of this year or before.

But yes, please do read Ben's paper. It's pretty easy going as it's lots of charts and a lot can be skimmed.

Regards always

Paul