With the program now entering its pre-teen years, it’s the perfect time to take stock of its efforts to reach young people in their second decade of life.
All activists have good years, bad years and the rare great one. For sex worker rights activists 2012 was a great year.
Just in time for World AIDS Day, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton unveiled a Blueprint for Achieving an AIDS-Free Generation. Overall, the Blueprint is surprisingly strong, especially in light of the fact that over the past few years, the Office of the Global AIDS Coordinator (OGAC) has done a lackluster job on young people and focused its rhetoric almost exclusively on biomedical approaches.
When it comes to making sure taxpayer-funded AIDS programs are comprehensive and designed to deliver the most effective interventions for people in need, the Obama administration’s track record has not been good.
We must seize this opportunity to promote a truly science-based, holistic, HIV prevention strategy for young people in the U.S. and abroad. In the end, it is young people who hold the key to ending this epidemic. That’s why they should be at the center, not the periphery, of our programs and policies.
December 1st marks World AIDS Day and this year’s theme is “Getting to Zero.” Much of this day will be focused on a celebration of new technology and science that can help prevent HIV through daily treatment and male circumcision. And we should celebrate those advances – but we should also not lose sight of women who need both family planning and HIV services.
President Obama has repeatedly stressed his administration’s commitment to science as one way to distinguish his leadership from that of his predecessor. Right now that commitment is being put to the test on HIV and AIDS: if the President could do more to end the crisis, would he?
A federal court today ruled that the government cannot force U.S. organizations to “denounce” prositution and sex trafficking as a condition for recieving international HIV and AIDS funding. The ruling applies only to U.S.-based non-governmental organizations and does not relieve non-U.S. organizations recieving U.S. funds from being subject to restrictions.
Rep. Bobby Franklin (R-Marietta, GA) of “rape victims aren’t victims” and, now, miscarriage is “prenatal murder” infamy, is not simply a “Lone Ranger,” as some call him. He’s exactly what happens when we allow a GOP full-scale war on women, girls and families to get this far.
Washington DC proposes birth control from pharmacists without a prescription; newly-created UN Women director speaks at the opening session of Commission on the Status of Women; GOP budget slashes foreign aid for HIV/AIDS programs and AIDS advocates say it will mean the loss of babies’ lives; Dr. Bernard Nathanson, a physician who provided abortions turned passionate-anti-legal-abortion-advocate dies.
