Toward eliminating health disparities in HIV/AIDS: the importance of the minority investigator in addressing scientific gaps in Black and Latino communities.

Dialogue in the medical and public health communities has increasingly focused attention in the area of health disparities. We believe that the elimination of health disparities in the United States will require a multipronged approach that includes, at the very least, new approaches in both biomedical and prevention interventions. We also believe that since health disparities primarily affect communities of color, a model which fosters the development of junior scientists, clinicians and researchers of color who serve these communities will yield important progress in this field. The Minority HIV/AIDS Research Initiative at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is a program that, through targeted research, aims to address health disparities in HIV/AIDS. Although the program is disease specific, there are a variety of lessons learned from its inception and implementation that can be useful throughout the scientific, medical and public health communities.