AIDS Fund aims to prevent, educate
Sumeet Patel
Issue date: 10/21/05 Section: Sci-Tech
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T: When it comes to HIV/AIDS awareness, there is a general feeling among members of the population that HIV/AIDS is no longer a serious concern. However, the statistics available today prove that HIV/AIDS is on the rise both in this country and across the world. Why is there a relaxed attitude towards the disease considering that the converse is true?
RR: The reality is that treatments [such as AZT] are available and are helping individuals to live longer, healthier lives, but it is also true that more and more individuals are living with HIV every year. Nearly 30,000 people in the Philadelphia region are living with it and unfortunately a third of them don't even know it. As a result, those people are not even accessing the treatments that are available and in the Philadelphia area, many people don't learn their HIV status until they are ill.
The other misconception is that the treatments will work for everyone when it is obvious that they don't. Also, many people don't have access to the treatments and AIDS is increasingly becoming the disease of the poor when housing, food and shelter are considered. Hence, there are many [public health related] factors that compound the medical issue alone, including issues such as substance abuse and issues surrounding compliance and transmission of the disease. These issues may not be as visible to people as they once were since people are, in fact, living longer, healthier lives.
T: The government's most recent response to the HIV/AIDS epidemic has been a blanket policy of sexual abstinence. However, advocating sexual abstinence as a method of prevention is in many ways like advocating thirst as way of preventing the spread of cholera - both are true in an objective sense, but fail to recognize the reality. What are methods are effective in combatting the spread of HIV/AIDS?
RR: As government funding becomes more restricted to abstinence-based programs, the private dollars to do other types of intervention education become increasingly important. In the field of prevention, most of our [AIDS Fund] programs focus on how to reduce risk-working with individuals to help improve communication skills, helping to deal with self-esteem issues and working around substance abuse and substance abuse related issues. We are finding that many people have the basic information, such as safer sex consists of using a condom, but what hasn't happened is that information hasn't been implemented into an individual's life. And what we don't see is people taking that information and implementing that into their day-to-day lives whether they don't see themselves at risk or they don't consider it a big issue. And those issues are what the organizations we work with come across and, of course, it's a much more complex approach than "Here, use a condom," which means more time and money are needed.
 Media Credit: Philadelphia AIDS Funds |
T: Why has abstinence become the "one size fits all" approach to the HIV/AIDS issue?
RR: First and foremost, abstinence does work and it is 100 percent effective. But what it doesn't do is acknowledge the reality of most peoples' lives. Certainly, abstinence education does need to be part of the message we are trying to send, but it probably isn't the only thing that is going to work. Public health policy really needs to meet people where they are and that is a big difficultly when it comes to programs that are strictly abstinence-based.
T: It's interesting to note that although AIDS itself is a disease that affects the human body in the basic biomedical sense, a number of public health studies have concluded that people who are on the lower end of the socioeconomic spectrum actually will live less longer and healthier lives. How do seeming these seemingly unrelated factors influence the biological outcome of the disease?
RR: We have to look to history since AIDS has always most effected disenfranchised communities. The stereotypical face of AIDS in the 1980s was middle class to upper class gay white men, however, there still are a number of communities that are disenfranchised in many ways. So when talking about disenfranchised communities, there's a variety of social and economic issues that come into play; gay men often have issues with low self-esteem because of the social taboo on homosexuality while most women who get HIV receive it through heterosexual transmission. Of course, it varies from group to group that's been impacted, but it all comes down to being disenfranchised,
T: What is AIDS Fund doing to eliminate stereotypes and raise awareness surrounding HIV/AID?
RR: I think we've come a long way in educating the public and dispelling the myth about AIDS. We work with 29 organizations in the Delaware Valley and there are several organizations which target specific communities. For example, there is
Blacks Educating Blacks About Sex providing AIDS education and care services to the African-American community and the GALLAE project for gay and lesbian Latinos. It's about understanding each community's needs and providing culturally appropriate and significant intervention in that community.
T: It often appears that pharmaceutical companies intentionally skew the image of an HIV/AIDS patient to show a robust, healthy and active individual when it is obviously far from the truth or reality of the situation. What is AIDS Fund doing to address these misconceptions?
RR: The truth is pharmaceutical companies are in the business of marketing their drugs and putting the most spin face on it. In my personal opinion, I don't think that people living with HIV buy into that propaganda. However, I am concerned for people who are seeing those ads and are not HIV positive and think AIDS is no longer a big issue. But we see every day what a big issue AIDS is for people and how it impacts their lives. We are starting to see a little change in the way pharmaceutical companies are conducting advertising. The Food and Drug Administration has done some cracking down on that kind of "false" advertising and my hope is that these companies will take that as a warning and recognize the impact that those messages may have.
 Media Credit: Philadelphia AIDS Fund |
T: One of the more disturbing aspects of the AIDS epidemic are conversion parties and bug chasers, individuals who seek to get the virus. In your experience, why do these individuals seek the virus and what does your organization do to address the situation?
RR: I believe the media has totally blown the issue out of proportion. I've been working in this area for nearly twenty years as either an activist or professionally and I have yet to see such a person in all of my interactions, May there be some individuals out there who are doing that - possibly. That may very well be an issue of self-esteem in the gay community and of wanting and acceptance. Many gay man have the mentality that they will end up with AIDS anyway since they are gay. However, people who seek the virus obviously have some severe psychological issue. My guess is that if there wasn't AIDS they would be doing some other type of destructive behavior.
T: Using our discussion of the socioeconomic and political aspects of HIV/AIDS as background, what does AIDS Fund do and how does it go about reaching its goal?
RR: We are set up as a community fund whose focus is HIV/AIDS prevention and awareness by raising and distributing funds to direct service providers. We have 29 such organizations who are on the front lines providing these critical services with our largest event being the AIDS Walk. This year we will raise over a half million dollars from AIDS Walk Philly. We also have a monthly gay bingo, which is bingo, but with a twist. It's bingo with a show, but our bingo verifying divas are primarily men in drag. We're proud that we can take something, make it fun and yet still have an impact on the epidemic.
T: How does AIDS fund determine how much funding an organization receives in such a large region?
RR: We actually have a two-tiered system; organizations and service providers can utilize the AIDS Walk campaign to raise money for themselves as well as apply for a competitive grant process. Once an organization receives funding, we consider them a partner organization and at that point they just submit updates annually in order to continue their funding.
T: Does AIDS Fund solely focus on socioeconomic and political causes or does it also sponsor scientific and related academic pursuits?
RR: We focus our efforts on prevention and public awareness, prevention education and care services and do not fund scientific research. That doesn't mean that there aren't some organizations who are doing some demonstration projects around best practices on prevention education messages or those kind of things. However, if you mean traditional scientific research, we're not doing any of that since it's not part of our mission or our goal. Our mission is to provide funds to help preventable causes and financial support to those who are living with HIV/AIDS.
T: What are some of the things the various organizations that you partner with do in terms of utilizing your fund dollars? What about, for example, hospice settings?
RR: Well we do fund one Calcutta house which provides 24 hour live-in care for the most fragile people living with HIV. That is one program we really try to fund the full continuum of service from street outreach right on through to hospice care. We fund the 8th law project that provides legal services for people living with AIDS. Many people think that just because we have legal protection for people living with AIDS in regards to housing or employment that discrimination no longer happens - but it happens everyday. They are involved when someone becomes ill and has financial difficulties. They become an advocate for utilities or landlords because they can no longer afford them since they can no longer work. They also do some work around family issues-things like standby guardianship. They were active in passing the legislation where somebody who is living with AIDS receives temporary custody of their children during periods of illness. It used to be that you had custody or you gave up custody. Now [the law] allows a much more fluid relationship. They are given help with things like wills. We also fund Prevention Point Philadelphia which is a needle exchange program they provide harm reduction services for people who are active-injecting drug users. They provide clean needles at exchange sites throughout the city and give information about substance abuse programs. We fund several organizations who provide case management. I was talking to someone earlier this morning and I think case management is a hard thing for people to understand until they need it. It is basically having a professional case worker who helps connect you to the services and really takes a holistic approach to looking at you housing situation, your medical care, your psycho support-systems and your food and nutrition. They assess each individual to determine what their individual needs are and then help to connect that person to appropriate services. Our social services system is a very complex system and they really help to navigate somebody through that system and connect them to things that are available. Obviously, we fund a lot of testing and counseling programs. That information of knowing your HIV status for those who are HIV positive is critically important. So we fund several HIV testing programs and an important component of the program is of course counseling,
T: What does AIDS Fund do in the arena of political awareness, especially in an environment that has become very sensitive to the subject of sexuality?
RR: As a 501-3c organization we don't do any lobbying. Our goal is raising public awareness about the issues and the impact. We're not involved really on a political level. We're more involved in raising awareness about the issues in general.
T: How difficult is your job becoming in an increasingly complex environment and at the same time when it seems that AIDS is growing by leaps and bounds both in this country and across the world?
RR: For us we're trying to raise funds - that's our primary focus. With the misperception that aids is no longer an issue in this country it's increasingly hard. Most of the news media that does occur really occurs around the huge global issue. It's very difficult for us to get attention around the issue here in the region. We were thrilled this year when we got a lot of media attention for the AIDS Walk. That helps us to get the message out there. The AIDS Walk in addition to raising funds does serve as a vehicle to reaching people to let them know that AIDS is still an issue in our community. There's a huge misconception that it's not a big deal anymore.
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