Globally, humanitarian crises—such as armed conflict, forced displacement, natural disasters and major disease outbreaks—affect more people today than at any point in recorded history. These crises have immense acute and long-term health impacts on hundreds of millions of people, predominantly in low and middle-income countries (LMIC), yet the evidence base that informs how humanitarian organisations respond to them is weak. Humanitarian crises are often treated as an outlier in global health. However, they are an increasingly common and widespread driver of health that should be integrated into comprehensive approaches and strategies, especially if we hope to achieve ambitious global health targets such as the Sustainable Development Goals. The academic research community can play an important role in addressing the evidence gap in humanitarian health. There are important scientific questions of high public health relevance that can only be addressed by conducting research in humanitarian settings. While working in these settings is uniquely challenging, there are effective strategies that can be employed, such as using flexible and adaptive research methodologies, partnering with non-governmental organisations and other humanitarian actors, and devoting greater attention to issues of research ethics, community engagement, local LMIC-based partners, building humanitarian research capacity and collaborating across disciplines.

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In this special 2014 issue of JAIDS, international investigator teams review a host of noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) that are often reported among people living and aging with HIV in sub-Saharan Africa. With the longer lifespans that antiretroviral therapy programs have made possible, NCDs are occurring due to a mix of chronic immune activation, medication side effects, coinfections, and the aging process itself. Cancer; cardiovascular and pulmonary diseases; metabolic, body, and bone disorders; gastrointestinal, hepatic, and nutritional aspects; mental, neurological, and substance use disorders; and renal and genitourinary diseases are discussed. Cost-effectiveness, key research methods, and issues of special importance in Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean are also addressed. In this introduction, we present some of the challenges and opportunities for addressing HIV and NCD comorbidities in lowand middle-income countries, and preview the research agenda that emerges from the articles that follow.