GROUPS BAND TOGETHER FOR HIV "PREVENTION JUSTICE"

Activists ask CDC to open doors, expand prevention techniques

After being boiled down to three basic strategies — abstain from sex,
wear a condom and avoid sharing needles — HIV prevention in
America is in urgent need of an expanded approach, according to a
nationwide coalition of AIDS organizations known as the Prevention
Justice Mobilization.

Traditional HIV-prevention messages tend to focus on personal
responsibility and reducing individual risk factors while ignoring
broader issues like poverty, homophobia and homelessness that may
increase a person's risk no matter what steps they take to remain
uninfected, said Kenyon Farrow, a spokesperson for the Prevention
Justice Mobilization.

There are also the sort of structural risk factors, so that sometimes
it's not about what you do, but who you are," Farrow said.

More than 250 AIDS organizations across the country have endorsed the
Prevention Justice Mobilization's goals, and are using their World
AIDS Day events to draw attention to everything from the
unavailability of condoms in New York prisons, to the need for public
funding of a needle-exchange program in Fulton County.

The Prevention Justice Mobilization's activities culminate in a Dec.
4 march and rally in Atlanta, designed to inject new ideas into the
Centers for Disease Control & Prevention's National HIV Prevention
Conference, which takes place Dec. 2-5 in Atlanta.

As part of the Prevention Justice Mobilization's efforts, the group
sent a Nov. 1 letter to CDC officials requesting that the "NGO
Village" at the HIV Prevention Conference — where non-government and
community-based organizations and vendors share information and raise
awareness about their efforts — be opened to people who aren't
registered for the prevention conference.

Many of the people in the Atlanta area that have been hit so hard by
this epidemic are small organizations that don't have the resources
to attend the conference itself," said local AIDS activist Jeff
Graham, a member of the Georgia Prevention Justice Alliance, which is
a partner with the Prevention Justice Mobilization.

The cost to attend the CDC conference is $450. The CDC is "currently
considering this request" to open the NGO Village to the public, said
Jennifer Ruth, a CDC spokesperson who added that the agency "strongly
agrees with efforts to increase access to prevention for at-risk
populations in the U.S."

However, it is also our understanding that [the Prevention Justice
Mobilization's] agenda addresses a broad range of issues related to
increasing access to prevention, and the scope of their interest goes
beyond CDC's efforts," Ruth said.

Attended by researchers and public health workers from across the
country, the National HIV Prevention Conference includes sessions on
the impact of HIV on communities of color, including black gay men.
Black gay men are the group hardest hit by HIV in the U.S., and a
prime example of how social factors, not only behavior, increase a
person's risk, Farrow said.

If you look at gay men, and all the data that looks at risk factors …
you see that black men don't practice any more risky behavior than
white men, or don't have more sex partners, but have a lot more HIV
and risk of HIV," Farrow said. "There's very little research about
black gay men and their risk factors. We're sort of trying things out
in a community that we don't have a lot of research for."

Whether it's a lack of access to health care, or being forced to
exchange sex for money, food or housing, many people find themselves
in situations that current HIV-prevention simply doesn't prepare them
for, Graham said.

All of those are very important issues to keep in mind as you try to
prevent the spread of HIV," said Graham, noting the increase in
infections in Fulton County and across the country. "This really
reverses a trend we've seen over a decade where HIV infections were
stable, but now they're back on the rise."

Graham, along with the Georgia Prevention Justice Mobilization, will
speak in favor of public funding for a needle-exchange program at the
Dec. 5 meeting of the Fulton County Commission.