AIDSWatch 2012

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It's part of political Washington's spring, like cherry blossoms and geese honking their way back home to Canada: we've just completed our twentieth annual AIDSWatch! Hundreds of real people living with HIV – from unglamourous places like Harlem and rural South Carolina – converged on Capitol Hill to talk to their Congressional representatives, remind them who they work for, and tell them what we need to live well with HIV and end the epidemic.

And end the epidemic. For the first time, we know we can end the epidemic.

That’s the big change from 1993, when NAPWA and Planned Parenthood announced the first AIDSWatch. Treatment-as-prevention works, in opposite-sex couples where one is positive and the other isn’t: people taking HIV antiviral drugs and reaching undetectable levels of live virus in their blood are radically less likely to infect their partners. Pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) works and is cost-effective in high-risk groups like gay men who have more than five partners a year. Needle exchanges are brilliantly cost-effective HIV prevention. Frank, explicit sex education for our young people works: we want them to wait, but they need to know about condoms.

What hasn’t changed? HIV stigma is still with us, and it kills. And our federal House of Representatives and state legislatures elected in two-year cycles have difficulty responding constructively to the simple fact that it costs our governments far less to test and treat everyone than to let HIV go undetected, untreated, and spreading. Cheaper over five or ten years – and that’s the problem for our two-year elected officials.

TAEP's Robert Greenwald (top) and NAPWA's Matt Lesieur

Today’s AIDSWatch is organized by NAPWA and the Treatment Access Expansion Project (TAEP), under the direction of NAPWA VP for Policy Matt Lesieur and TAEP Director Robert Greenwald. Like AIDSWatch twenty years ago, this year’s AIDSWatch had definite “Asks” for our reps on Capitol Hill, “Asks” shaped by what has changed and what hasn’t:

▸   Protect and implement the Affordable Care Act! It’s cheaper to treat HIV early, before PLWHA get sick. But we can’t do that while 50 million Americans are excluded from health care. We need ACA’s expansion of Medicaid – and so do many Americans not living with HIV.

▸   Fund HIV treatment and support programs at levels that meet the real need! Ryan White programs help lower-income people with HIV get the drugs they need to stay healthy. Housing Opportunities for People with AIDS (HOPWA) helps people living with HIV stay in stable housing, which helps them take their meds on time and deal with other issues like substance dependence. Ryan White support programs help PLWHA get into treatment and stay in treatment. These programs save money. Budget hawks who want to cut them risk larger deficits in the future.

▸   Support science over politics in public policy! Repeal the ban on federal funding for needle exchanges. Ask your representatives to pass HR 3035, the Repeal HIV Discrimi-nation Act. Fund comprehensive, science-based sex education, and fund the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Initiative at $130 million, a $50 million increase over fiscal 2012.

     Training for Capitol Hill visits

What makes an effective Capitol Hill visit?

You have to stick to the point and keep it short and sweet. You have to make your “Asks” constructively so your rep or your rep’s health staffer can respond constructively. And you need to know what to expect.
So part of our AIDSWatch training was the “Asks” themselves, and part was role plays with friendly and unfriendly officials.

NBLCA’s C. Virginia Fields, elected Manhattan’s Borough President in 1997 and 2001, played the friendly official – open, responsive, already so well informed that she was almost leading her visitors to the “Asks.” All sweetness and light.

The fun started when AIDS Alabama’s Kathie Hiers turned herself into North Carolina “Senator” Hiers and interrupted her visitors’ first breath with, “But didn’t ‘you people’ bring this on yourselves?” Patiently her visitors explained, no matter how we became infected, it costs the state more to leave us untreated – and that’s why ADAP is so important. “What’s ADAP,” the Senator asked. “It saves peoples’ lives, Senator,” they answered. “We have people dying because they can’t get the drugs they need. ADAP helps them get their drugs. You have constituents dying.” “Well that’s not good,” the Senator said, “we can’t have voters dying on us. I’ll think about what you said.”

Thanking our friends

One of AIDSWatch’s happy traditions is the Positive Leadership Award Reception, at which we honor those who have served us well.

A full room at the Positive Leadership Award Reception

The Positive Leadership Award is NAPWA’s and AIDSWatch’s highest recognition of outstanding leadership and service to people living with HIV. NAPWA and TAEP were proud to recognize –

▸   Representatives Barbara Lee, Jim McDermott, and Trent Franks for leading the Congressional HIV/AIDS Caucus and efforts to build a strong, collaborative response to domestic and global issues in the fight against HIV/AIDS.

▸   Kali Lindsey, Terrance Moore and Venton Jones for leadership in the young black gay men's advocacy movement and for bringing new energy and ideas to the fight against HIV/AIDS.

▸   Terry McGovern & the Ford Foundation for having the vision and leadership to recognize the importance of bringing initiatives like the 30 for 30 Campaign and the Southern HIV/AIDS Strategy Initiative to life, and in doing so, for making a major contribution to mproving the lives of persons living with HIV and AIDS; C. Virginia Fields & the 30 for 30 Campaign for ensuring that the unique needs of women and girls living with and affected by HIV are addressed in the national response to the epidemic, and, in doing so, for making a major contribution to improving the lives of persons living with HIV and AIDS; and Carolyn McAllaster & the Southern HIV/AIDS Strategy Initiative for ensuring that integrated HIV prevention, care, and services models for communities like those in the South are included in the national response to the epidemic, and, in doing so, for making a major contribution to improving the lives of persons living with HIV and AIDS.

▸   Solicitor General Donald Verrilli, Jr., for his unwavering dedication to protecting health care reform, and in doing so, for making a major contribution to improving the lives of persons living with HIV and AIDS.

New ONAP Director Dr. Grant Colfax congratulates
the Positive Leadership Award recipients

NAPWA also made special Positive Leadership Awards to Bill Collier, Marc Meachem, and ViiV Healthcare North America; Christopher Bates, departing Executive Directgor of the President's Advisory Commission on HIV/AIDS (PACHA); Bristol-Myers Squibb's Jessica Riviere; A&U Magazine’s David Waggoner; Janet C. Cleveland, Deputy Director for Prevention Programs, CDC Division of HIV/AIDS Prevention (DHAP), and NAPWA's first CDC project officer; and AIDS United's Interim President and CEO Victor Barnes. We’re grateful for all they do for people living with HIV and proud to have them for friends!