Make a Resolution to Help End the Epidemic
Welcome to 2014. 2013 was clearly a tumultuous year, from the lows of the government shutdown and shaky rollout of healthcare.gov, the Affordable Care Act website, to the highs of the U.S. Supreme Court standing up for marriage equality. But even with healthcare.gov's initial challenges, over 2 million Americans who previously didn't have access to healthcare now have access to healthcare—no more pre-existing conditions, no more annual caps, no more lifetime caps. That is remarkable! 2014 also marks the 15th anniversary of the founding of the Black AIDS Institute. It's unimaginable how much the world—and particularly HIV/AIDS world—has changed in the last 15 years. Fifteen years ago, nowhere in our wildest imagination would we have thought that it would be possible to have a realistic, science-based expectation of ending the AIDS epidemic.
Yet that is where we are—thinking about ways that we can more aggressively and more effectively work towards an AIDS-free generation! For the Black AIDS Institute, that means continuing to expand capacity and build infrastructure in our communities to fight the epidemic; it means utilizing the new tools at our disposal that help us diagnose new infections; and it means treating people who are living with HIV and preventing new infections.
One of the wonderful things about a new year is we get to start over. We get to hit the reset button; we get to make new goals and objectives. If we want to end the epidemic in our lifetime, our resolutions need to reflect that. In my opinion the four most important things that we can work on towards ending the AIDS epidemic are:
1) helping everyone living with HIV to know their HIV status;
2) creating an environment where people living with HIV feel free to live their lives openly without fear of discrimination bodily harm, or even death;
3) helping both people who are living with HIV and people who are not use the new biomedical prevention tools to prevent transmission and acquisition of the virus, as needed;
4) and finally and maybe even most importantly, providing people with HIV or at high risk of infection access to the quality healthcare that we need and deserve.
As we start this journey of 2014, I challenge you to set a goal that's tied to one of these objectives. Mark your calendar today: Describe where we are and describe what contributions you can make to move us closer to achieving those goals by the end of this year. If you don't already know your HIV status, your contribution could be to get tested and make sure that everybody in your immediate sphere of influence gets tested as well. If you're living with HIV, it could be do a personal disclosure assessment. Figure out who in your life needs to know about your HIV status, and tell them.
The new HIV guidelines say that everyone living with HIV should be on treatment, so if you're positive and not on treatment, get on treatment. Being on treatment is good for you and it dramatically reduces the likelihood of you transmitting the virus to someone else. If you're HIV negative, for God's sake protect yourself. If you're sexually active, look into whether PrEP is appropriate for you. Finally, all of us need to make sure that the Affordable Care Act is fully implemented and that it works for people living w/ HIV AIDS.
Wouldn't be great if we could show a dramatic decrease in new infections and a dramatic increase in the percentage of people living with HIV who have achieved viral suppression? We plan on doing our part. We need you to do yours. The Black AIDS Institute has a lot planned this year to move the needle and celebrate our 15th anniversary, starting with our Drive Out AIDS raffle sponsored by Car Pros Kia of Carson. Please go to www.AIDSRaffle.org and enter to win a chance to get a new 2014 Kia Forte.
In this issue we learn how Arkansas governor Mike Beebe, a Democrat, packaged expanded Medicaid coverage so that it would be palatable to his state's Republican legislators. We find out about longtime AIDS advocate Congresswoman Barbara Lee's legislation to halt federal funding for abstinence-only education, which has been discredited by a wide body of evidence. Our friends at Kaiser Health News remind us that as first-time insurance buyers begin using certain lower-cost plans, some may discover that they will have to pay their annual deductible before the cost of certain doctor's visits are covered; those still shopping for health insurance should keep this in mind as they do so.
A recent study has found that among people living with HIV who had private insurance, missing clinic visits during their first year of care increased their death risk by more than 70 percent. Another study found that having more than 200 lifetime partners and injecting drugs dramatically increased the odds of developing the anal HPV virus associated with anal cancer.
Yours in the struggle,
Phill