National AIDS Strategy

HIV Law Project’s Center for Women & HIV Advocacy has released its latest report: “Better Late Than Never: HIV Prevention Among Young Women & Girls."  The report catalogues the myriad biological, cultural, and socioeconomic factors that have caused steadily rising rates of HIV among young women and girls, particularly young women of color.  The report then offers an expansive series of recommendations to promote effective prevention efforts among this population.  Recommendations are based in interventions with proven efficacy, and are premised in the importance of integrating HIV prevention with sexual and reproductive health care.  As the Obama administration moves forward on a National AIDS Strategy, this report offers timely background and important recommendations for halting the rise of HIV among young women and girls.  

The report can be found at:
http://hivlawproject.org/resources/cwha/Better-Late-Than-Never-05072009.pdf

Congratulations to Stephanie Morain, Alison Yager and the others at the Center for this helpful new analysis.

This past Thursday Dec 18, 2008, having taken pleasure in a deliciously prepared Thai Cuisine lunch sponsored by The Univ of Penn, CFAR CAB, as a welcoming salutation to our distinguished guest speaker Dr. Thomas J. Coates, UCLA AIDS Institute at the David Geffen School of Medicine,  I couldn’t imagine anywhere else I’d rather be. That is to say except to join the migration to Penn’s BRB Auditorium along with both Drs. John and Loretta Jemmott, some Penn Staff & Researchers and members of the CFAR CAB. Here we were to be served the academic portion and the main course of Dr Coates expertise, through his lecture entitled” HIV Prevention What’s Next Globally”.

 

Through a conversation with Michael Blank, Ph.D., Co-Director Penn Behavioral & Social Sciences Core and Tiffany Brown, Penn CFAR CAB Coordinator, I learned it took every bit of “two years” to coordinate Dr. Coate’s appearance. As Vice-Chair of Penn’s CFAR CAB and a person who is living with AIDS, I would like to extend my heartfelt thanks to Penn’s competent Staff for facilitating Dr. Coates’ appearance and affirm that Dr Coates’ appearance was well worth the 2 year wait. It was an enriching experience.   read more »

Our luncheon was thoughtfully planned to be small and intimate, which allowed for some informal conversation. Up until now, of course all of my encounters with Dr. Coates had been external and superficial. I knew of him and his work through teleconferences, list serves, medical journals, internet, magazines, web cams, closed circuit TV and satellite presentations at various conferences. I took pleasure in meeting Dr Coates face to face and I got the distinct impression that he liked me too, but I’ll leave him to blog about that. I found Dr. Coates to be good-natured, up-beat and charming. I knew I would learn many things today in the course of conversation over lunch and by way of his lecture, and unexpectedly one of the first things I learned was The David Geffen School @ UCLA (where Dr Coates joined the Division of Infectious Diseases in 2003) is “the only school in the world named after a Gay Man.” Mmm, I thought. Interesting.

World AIDS Day: We’re still living with AIDS

By Kenyon Farrow

(originally written for the NGLTF Policy Institute)

December 1, 2008

Today, many of us will dust off those red ribbons, and “remember” to remember the people who we’ve lost, and who are currently living with HIV/AIDS.

Some of us may even donate money to an AIDS charity doing work in some far flung place. But red ribbons and prayer services that commemorate only hide the reality that here in America, we are still living with AIDS.  read more »

On November 20, over 1000 low-income people of color living with HIV came to the 100 Days to Fight AIDS rally to stand up for the ambitious HIV/AIDS platform under which Obama campaigned for president, including his pledge for a National AIDS Strategy.

For a change, we approached the nation’s capitol in the lead-up to World AIDS Day with a spirit of hope. In the coming months, we must continue to push forward with an expectation of more – not just more resources for existing HIV/AIDS efforts, but for a more strategic and more coordinated, comprehensive response that will actually bring down the rate of infection, tackle the epidemic in communities of color and in gay men, and bring dignity and medical care to the lives of all those who are infected.

And change is what we need. Since we last commemorated World AIDS Day, it’s been confirmed that HIV/AIDS is worse in the United States than we ever knew.
 read more »

It was cold like January in DC last Thursday—the atmosphere fittingly freezing for our community inauguration of President-Elect Barack Obama as the first true AIDS president, a theatrical enactment to seal the promise of January 20th.   read more »

After a long campaign, we now know that Senator Barack Obama will be our next president. At this historic moment of hope, we celebrate both the power of community organizing and the possibilities the Obama victory represents for this country.

President-Elect Obama's campaign platform (the HIV/AIDS agenda is available in PDF) included a strong stance on HIV and AIDS issues, rooted in the call for a National AIDS Strategy (NAS).

We are badly in need of new and sustained resources in the fight against HIV/AIDS in this country. We also need a comprehensive, measurable strategy against the epidemic that dares to re-envision and recraft our HIV/AIDS response to meet and overcome a new generation of challenges.  read more »