News 2010
Black Treatment Advocates Network (BTAN) - Jackson, Mississippi Training September 27 through October 1, 2010
The Black AIDS Institute (The Institute), My Brother's Keeper and other local AIDS Service Organizations (ASOs)across the country have partnered to launch the Black Treatment Advocates Network (BTAN). BTAN, the only collaboration of its kind, will train and mobilize a team of treatment advocates with a mission of linking Black Americans with HIV into care and treatment, and strengthening local and national leadership, raising HIV science literacy in Black communities, and advocating for policy and research priorities.
Connecting People to Care and Connecting Children to the Earth
Opinion Editorial by CEO and Founder Phill Wilson
Earlier this summer the Obama administration announced our country's first National HIV/AIDS Strategy. In this issue we continue our look at the plan's impact upon Black Americans. Writer Rod McCullom examines the administration's goal to connect greater numbers of people to care and treatment—a critically important objective that has been in the news over the past year, as states have reacted to the economic downturn by cutting and even eliminating AIDS Drug Assistance Programs (ADAP) budgets.
Is the National HIV/AIDS Strategy Good for Black Americans? Part 2: Increasing Access to Care
In July, when the Obama administration launched its National HIV/AIDS Strategy, a spokesperson for New York City-based Housing Works challenged the strategy's goal of reducing new infections by 25 percent. But the group's national organizing director, Larry Bryant, describes as "ambitious" the second leg of the administration's strategy: increasing access to care.
Ethiopian AIDS Orphans Fight Stigma With Self-Sufficiency
In Ethiopia, 5.4 million children are considered to be orphaned or vulnerable, according to government estimates. Many of these young people, who represent 6 percent of the country's total population, live with sick parents or no parents or adults. They often face extreme poverty, fail to finish school or are abused by adults who are supposed to be caring for them. More than 800,000 have lost one or both parents to HIV/AIDS, and an estimated 77,000 live in child-headed households.
Read more: Ethiopian AIDS Orphans Fight Stigma With Self-Sufficiency
Will the National AIDS Strategy Work?
This July President Obama fulfilled his campaign promise of enacting a National HIV/AIDS Strategy (NHAS) for the United States. The launch of this strategy marks the first time in the almost 30 years of America's HIV/AIDS epidemic that our nation will undertake a coordinated response and hold decision-makers accountable for achieving results.