September 24, 2008

NAPWA Testifies Before Congress

Addressing Structural/Systemic/Economic Barriers

A recent report released by the Black AIDS Institute has helped us understand that if we adjusted our view of AIDS in this country to look at its impact on the black community, the devastation would be greater than that of seven of the 15 President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief–funded countries.

NAPWA supports HIV prevention activities that are culturally and gender specific. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention understanding that more thoughtful and coordinated efforts are needed launched the Heightened National Response to the HIV/AIDS epidemic in African-American communities. NAPWA supports similar community mobilization strategies for all communities disproportionately impacted by this disease. In this manner, NAPWA will launch the first National Gay Men’s HIV/AIDS Awareness Day on September 27, 2008, in Raleigh, North Carolina. The day will seek to accomplish increased awareness about the needs of gay men for HIV/AIDS prevention, care and treatment; forums to strategize effective responses to the epidemic in this community; and social marketing campaigns that promote evidence-based and de-stigmatizing strategies and messages.

NAPWA seeks appropriate resources to provide capacity building assistance (CBA) in the form of technical assistance and skills-building trainings to women-led or women-serving community based organizations (CBOs). The purpose of this CBA is to: 1.) increase the effectiveness and sustainability of these CBOs in providing culturally competent, gender-specific HIV prevention services and 2.) strengthen partnerships between these CBOs and HIV-positive women. Such a partnership is essential to reaching, encouraging and supporting women’s access to the continuum of HIV services beginning with HIV testing.

The global community has already begun to address how criminalization of HIV transmission exacerbates rather than promotes an effective and medically sound means of stopping the spread of HIV. Stigmatization has no preventative effects! It is extremely destructive to people already living with HIV and discourages others from disclosing their status or getting tested. Further, these cases undermine the efforts of public health advocates who have worked tirelessly over the years to educate the public about HIV.

Targeted HIV screening is sound public health and proven efficacious for maximizing resources. These well-intended efforts have at times resulted in missed opportunities for diagnosis, prevention and treatment intervention. Yvette Ogletree of San Marcos, California, reports going to a doctor several times complaining of persistent illness. In spite of evidence of immune suppression and a recently deceased husband, her doctor refused to test her for HIV on the grounds that she wasn’t at risk because she was married. When Yvette was finally tested for HIV, she was diagnosed with AIDS, having four CD4 cells (the white blood cells that HIV inhabits to replicate and perpetuate its existence) and meningitis. This result complicates which treatments are available to respond to the disease in addition to impeding prevention opportunities caused by an absent timely diagnosis. This occurrence should never happen. The cost is individual life! Undiagnosed HIV results in AIDS and death.

PLWHA have rights! Our lives have value. I think we need to state unequivocally that PLWHA are partners to achieving HIV prevention goals. However, policies and laws that perpetuate stigma and discrimination and/or threaten confidentiality (forced testing, criminal transmission, immigration ban, onerous and invasive record-keeping, etc.) hurt efforts to engage PLWHA in prevention activities. Finally the lack of broad social marketing about HIV/AIDS that includes people openly living with HIV contributes to more ignorance and misinformation about all of us who are living with HIV/AIDS and adds to stigma.

The National Association of People with AIDS (NAPWA) continues to act as a conduit for people with HIV/AIDS to provide meaningful input in all issues affecting our lives. Such input is especially needed at the highest levels of political and public life. We urge both political parties to make a response to HIV/AIDS a central component of their plans for the nation.

• Development, implementation and bipartisan support for a National AIDS Strategy to bring a much more coordinated, evidence-based and results-oriented approach to addressing HIV prevention and treatment in our country, inclusive of persons living with HIV/AIDS
• Increased federal appropriations for domestic HIV prevention programs
• Federal leadership to address stigmatizing policies and increase visibility of persons living with HIV/AIDS
• Ensuring affordable access to comprehensive and quality care, treatment and support services
• Increased support and funding for innovative biomedical and behavioral research initiatives

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