News 2014
Late Registration for the 2015 National African American MSM Leadership Conference on HIV/AIDS and Other Health Disparities Closes January 9, 2015
Renaissance Concourse Hotel in Atlanta, Georgia, location of the 2015 National African American MSM Leadership Conference on HIV/AIDS and other Health Disparities
The 12th installment of the National African American MSM Leadership Conference on HIV/AIDS and other Health Disparities will take place during the MLK weekend, January 15-18, 2015, at the Renaissance Concourse Atlanta Airport Hotel. This conference will coincide with the H3/BGRG Summit scheduled to take place January 14, 2015. For more information on the conference or to register please visit the NAESM, Inc. website at www.naesm.org.
In This Isssue
This is a very, very important week for people purchasing health insurance on HealthCare.gov. If you want your insurance to begin on January 1, 2015, you only have 6 days left to buy it.
How Obamacare Went South In Mississippi, Part 2
There is a timeless quality to many Mississippi landscapes – and a sense that the problems wrought by poverty in the state can't be overcome.
In the country's unhealthiest state, the failure of Obamacare is a group effort.
Mississippians are all too familiar with the dirge of bleak statistics. During my travels, I often heard, "We know what the rest of the country thinks of us." It would become a point of pride, then, that in 2007, Mississippi was leading a race it wanted to win. That fall, a full year before Obama's election to the White House put national health care reform on the agenda, the governor, Haley Barbour, called up the newly elected state insurance commissioner Mike Chaney, a Vietnam veteran from Vicksburg.
HIV Care Continuum: Controlling the Virus is Key
Achieving viral suppression
Recently, CDC released a new Vital Signs Report on HIV. The data support the call-to-action to increase the number of people living with HIV who achieve viral suppression. Having very low levels of HIV in the body, achieved by taking antiretroviral medicines allows people living with HIV to have nearly normal lifespans and greatly reduces their chances of transmitting the virus. Yet only 30% of all people living with HIV have achieved viral suppression, an important end-goal on the HIV Care Continuum. Of the 1.2 million people living with HIV in 2011:
Revised Hepatitis C (HCV)/HIV Coinfection Section of the Adult and Adolescent Antiretroviral Treatment Guidelines Released
Ron Valdiserri
The HHS Panel on Antiretroviral Guidelines for Adults and Adolescents has announced the release of the updated "Guidelines for the Use of Antiretroviral Agents in HIV-1-Infected Adults and Adolescents." As described in What's New in the Guidelines, this interim revision of the guidelines features a revised section on Hepatitis C (HCV)/HIV Coinfection that emphasizes considerations for use of antiretroviral (ARV) drugs in patients who also receive treatment for HCV infection.