AIDS Watch 2003 is about delivering the message to Congress that 'these are real people using real programs.' Increased funding is crucial to keeping people alive, said Terje Anderson, executive director of the National Association of People With AIDS (NAPWA).
He spoke on May 18 at the opening of the three-day event. Sunday was filled with briefing and training sessions, the next two days with visits to Members of Congress. More than 400 advocates pre-registered for AIDS Watch, organized by NAPWA and a coalition of other groups.
Anderson said their presence was 'an incredibly powerful statement of your commitment to these issues' in light of the financial difficulties that many organizations are facing.
'Tax cuts have direct implications on how much money is going to be available for HIV/AIDS programs,' explained Laura Hanen, director of government relations for the National Alliance of State and Territorial AIDS Directors (NASTAD). She sees the smaller $350 billion package proposed by the Senate as better than the House version which is more than twice as large.
Ernest Hopkins, a lobbyist for the San Francisco AIDS Foundation, was pleased with the recent 'thoughtful dialog' in both chambers in passing an international AIDS bill.
'Your job is to bring it back to talking about what is happening in your local community,' he said. 'You need to focus on why these programs are important to you at home ... don't focus on the large numbers' in the total appropriation.
'You can't take the support of Democrats for granted,' one person cautioned from the audience. They 'rolled-over' on recent votes and supported abstinence-based prevention programs.
Hopkins told how one constituent recently took their Representative to task for becoming quiet and not as visible in the media on AIDS issues as she had been in the past. The Congresswoman was shocked to hear the evaluation, and 'really got it,' he said.
One of the greatest political accomplishments has been to make AIDS a bipartisan issue. He urged that they continue to frame their efforts within that context. 'Don't let members of either party off the hook, none of them are doing enough on the domestic front. Make it a leadership issue. They get the devastation of the disease [from the international discussion], now bring it back home.'
'Housing equals health,' said Kathie Hiers, offering a short briefing on HOPWA, the housing program for people with AIDS. A recent survey of the homeless in Birmingham found that 15% knew they were infected with HIV. 'How can people adhere to a difficult medical therapy without a roof over their head?' asked the executive director of AIDS Alabama.
Ross Baker, with the Lifelong AIDS Alliance in Seattle, demonstrated a 'prevention works dance' as an animated aid to remembering the major messages in lobbying on HIV prevention. The five points he emphasized were: prevention is cost effective; say 'no' to abstinence-only programs; more money for vaccine research and needle exchange; and people of color are affected disproportionately.
He closed by forming a big 'C' with his arms, which stands for condoms, community-based programs, and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC).
Hopkins reviewed the Ryan White programs. 'We need significant increases for all of them,' he said. The largest increase should be for the AIDS Drug Assistance Programs (ADAP) where an additional $280 million is needed. Some 14 states already have imposed restrictions on access to ADAP and more are likely to follow. 'This is about people's access to life-and-death services.'
We often take Medicaid for granted because it's an entitlement program and not AIDS-specific, said Robert Greenwald. However, 'it is an increasingly important part of the HIV healthcare delivery system.' He criticized the Bush administration proposal to 'reform' the program by capping expenditures, calling it essentially a gutting of Medicaid. 'The way to solve the budget crisis is not on the backs of poor people who need healthcare.'
David Munar, with the AIDS Foundation of Chicago, said the Minority HIV/AIDS Initiative is 'a complement to all that is going on.' It aims 'to build the capacity of minority organizations to deliver services' in populations that have been disproportionately affected by the disease. 'It is not a substitute for other programs.'
One piece of good news to come out of the briefing is that Bush administration efforts to force the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) to purchase $233 million of anthrax vaccine appear to have been derailed. Senators Arlen Specter, R-Penn., and Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, wrote a joint letter expressing their displeasure with the effort, and it appears to have worked.
That money would have come out of current appropriations for research grants. NIAID funds the greatest portion of HIV research grants by the National Institutes of Health.
Anderson urged the audience members to 'stay on message and not get sucked into minutia' when visiting with members of congress and their staffs. Often the time is very limited. It should be used to push for more money.
'We don't want congress writing the rules; when they do, we get abstinence-only' prevention programs, he said. 'We want them to write the check and then we will work with the experts to make sure the check gets spent well.'
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