Fight HIV in DC

POZ, comfortable nights out for POZ guys, their friends & supporters, now has expanded days and locations.

You can still find POZ every Tuesday Night at Motley Bar, upstairs from the EFN Lounge at 1318 9th St NW from 7pm-12am.

Now you can also find POZ every Wednesday: 7pm-12am UPSTAIRS at the Green Lantern, 1331 Green Court NW.

POZ also takes place on the fourth Saturdays at MOVA Lounge, 1435 P St NW, from 9:00 PM till close.

The goal of POZ is to give the HIV+ community of the DC metro area, and those who are supportive, a safe place to gather, socialize, find new friends, maybe even a date, and of course, moral/emotional support. The DC Center is proud to be a co-sponsor of this event.

DC Community AIDS Network's Pat Hawkins recently testified before city council on implementing medical marijuana in the District.

You can see the video of her testimony here.

You can also check out the entire hearing by clicking here.

Alphadrugs invites you to attend its Survival Forum VII, a lecture on new therapies for Hepatitis C and HIV/AIDS, finding the strongest possible regimen with the fewest side effects, on Thursday, March 18th at 6.30 PM.

HCV, a major cause of chronic liver disease, progresses more rapidly in the body of someone who is infected with HIV. It can also interfere with course and management of an HIV infection. As HIV medications increase the lifespan of people infected with HIV, HCV-related liver disease has become a major cause of hospitilization and death among those infected with HIV.

Join Alphadrugs for a lecture on new therapies for coinfection. It will be presented by Micheal Pistole, and HCV/HIV specialist.

The lecture will be held at the Hotel Palomar, in the Phillips Ballroom, 2121 P Street NW. Registration will begin at 6.30, and the lecture and dinner will start at 7.

To RSVP, or for more information, contact leigh@alphadrugs.com or call 202-265-5757

Dear Fellow DC Youth Advocates:

No matter what issue you work on, I need you to take action to ensure that we preserve the health of DC youth. Whether your issue is asthma, unintentional injuries, teen pregnancy, smoking, nutrition, obesity, drugs and alcohol, LGBT youth, HIV or something else, this impacts us all.

I recently spoke with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Division of Adolescent School Health (DASH) who informed me that the 2009 implementation of the Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance Survey (YRBS) was deemed unusable. DC’s data will not be part of any CDC publication or analysis.

According to my conversation with Dr. Laura Kann from DASH, DC needed to achieve a response rate of 60% of its targeted sample size in order to meet the CDC requirement for accurate, weighted data. DC only managed to reach 36%. In other words we did not meet their requirement - an embarrassment for the city and a huge setback in our city’s attempt to “measure” our successes.

The Office of the State Superintendent of Education (OSSE) is responsible for implementation of the YRBS and has clearly not taken the task seriously. I am concerned that Dr. Briggs and her staff do not take the health of DC youth seriously and that they are not actually interested in progress measures when it comes to health and nutrition. In fact, Dr. Briggs and Dr. Schliker have been dismissive of our community’s offers to support OSSE.

As you may know, the YRBS, conducted every two years by states, cities, and counties, is perhaps the single most important data set we have for monitoring the health behaviors of DC youth. According to the CDC,

“The YRBS assesses six categories of priority health risk behaviors—behaviors that contribute to unintentional injuries and violence; tobacco use; alcohol and other drug use; sexual behaviors that contribute to unintended pregnancy and STDs, including HIV infection; unhealthy dietary behaviors; and physical inactivity—plus overweight and asthma.”

Many of use the YRBS data for our programs and for our grants. From a city-wide perspective, many of us were excited to use YRBS data to objectively measure the city’s efforts to improve the health of its youth and to highlight the challenges that remain.
Amazingly, in these tough economic times, the city will have no usable 2009 youth health data to make the case for additional federal funding!

The next implementation will be in 2011 and those results will not be available until 2012. But planning of that effort must begin now.
Please help us with the following:

1. Please come and testify at the OSSE oversight hearings this Friday (10:00 AM at the Wilson Building, Room 412.) We must tell the Dr. Briggs that this negligence is not acceptable. To testify at the hearing, please contact Aretha Latta at 724-8196 or alatta@dccouncil.us.

2. If you cannot testify in person, please submit written testimony.

3. If you don’t want to testify, come out Friday and support those of us who do.

We have three demands:

1. That OSSE present a written plan on how they will ensure that the 2011 YRBS will be
properly implemented with adequate student and school participation;

2. That the City Council ensure that ALL DC students (DCPS and charter schools) receive high-quality age appropriate Health and Physical Education; and

3. That the City Council clarify OSSE’s responsibility for measuring schools’ and students’ progress in meeting the Health Learning Standards.

Please pass this on to other allied youth health advocates.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me or Josh Rovner, Policy and Advocacy Manager (jrovner@metroteenaids.org).

Thursday, February 25th

10am-12pm

2501 Benning Rd NE

This training is a must for those performing HIV testing in DC!

PEMS (Program Evaluation and Monitoring System) is the data collection system (paperwork) everyone performing HIV testing in DC needs to submit. Keith Floyd and Patrice Ward from the Department of Health will be providing this training. This is a unique opportunity to get all of your questions and concerns answered directly from the source.

Spaces are limited! To reserve a seat, please email Mary Beth Levin (mlevin@preventionworksdc.org).

The next CAVE meeting will take place March 10th at 7:00 PM at the DC Center, 1810 14th St, NW. Our meetings normally take place the second Wednesday of each month.

CAVE is the community advisory board for the Vaccine Research Center and the US Military HIV Research Program. Capital Area Vaccine Effort is a volunteer panel of individuals from the general public and from the diverse communities affected by AIDS. CAVE is organized to assist and advise AIDS vaccine trials in the metropolitan DC area. For more information visit www.aidsvaccine.org.

The DC Center HIV Working Group is working in partnership with Rev. Dyan Abena McCray of the Unity Fellowship Church of DC and Rev. Dwayne Johnson of the Metropolitan Community Church of Washington DC to plan an event for the National Week of Prayer for the Healing of AIDS taking place the week of March 7th.

If you would like to be involved in helping to plan this event, or coordinate outreach to churches in DC, please contact HIV Working Group member Calvin Gerald.

The National Week of Prayer for the Healing of AIDS is is the coming together of all people of faith to unite with purpose, compassion and hope. Through the power of God’s love we will educate every American about HIV prevention facts; encourage and support HIV testing; advocate for the availability of compassionate care and treatment for all those living with the disease in every community in America; and love unconditionally all persons living with and affected by HIV/AIDS.

The popular POZ party is growing. In addition to having POZ nights every Tuesday at Motley Bar, there is now a monthly POZ event at MOVA (formerly HALO) the fourth Saturday of every month.

The goal of POZ is to give the HIV+ community of the DC metro area, and those who are supportive, a safe place to gather, socialize, find new friends, maybe even a date, and of course, morale/emotional support.

For more information check out the POZ Facebook Group, or read this article about Jacob Pring and the POZ Party.

The next CAVE meeting will take place February 10th at 7:00 PM at the DC Center, 1810 14th St, NW. Our meetings normally take place the second Wednesday of each month.

One of the roles of CAVE is to review protocols for new HIV vaccine studies and to provide input to the researchers from a community perspective.  We will be reviewing a protocol for the Military HIV Working Group in January.  If you've never done anything like this, don't worry.  The meeting will include an overview of how to review protocols.

CAVE is the community advisory board for the Vaccine Research Center and the US Military HIV Research Program. Capital Area Vaccine Effort is a volunteer panel of individuals from the general public and from the diverse communities affected by AIDS. CAVE is organized to assist and advise AIDS vaccine trials in the metropolitan DC area.  For more information visit www.aidsvaccine.org.

February 7 is National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness and Information Day (NBHAAD). This annual observance day was created to raise awareness among African Americans about HIV/AIDS and its devastating impact on African American communities. The day is part of a national mobilization effort to get African Americans to learn more about the threat posed by the disease, get tested, get treated and make a commitment to fight HIV/AIDS.

Here in Washington, DC there is no question that African Americans are disproportionately impacted by HIV/AIDS. According to our surveillance report, African Americans make up about 55% of the DC population, but constitute 80% of District residents living with HIV. Further, of the 842 cases of HIV/AIDS among men who have sex with men from 2001 to 2006, 63% were among black men.

National Black AIDS Awareness Day is a great opportunity to raise awareness of how HIV/AIDS impacts Black gay and bisexual men. If you're interested in helping organize a National Black AIDS Awareness Day event in Washington DC, please let me know.

To learn more about the National Black AIDS Awareness Day, visit www.blackaidsday.org.

Jacob Pring is featured in this Examiner Article talking about the POZ Mixers that take place every Tuesday at Motley.

This is not your typical happy hour social. And it is not quite an old-fashioned support group. It is a mixer for gay, positive men in D.C. Why does such a mixer need to exist? Jacob Nathaniel Pring created such a mixer to help ease the tension when one must disclose his status to a potential partner. It’s POZ night on this sublimely frigid Tuesday and it’s been going on now for six weeks. Chris, a regular patron, shares “It’s hard. You have two or three amazing dates and then you have to come to them and say ‘I have something to tell you’. At least here you don’t have to be so dramatic”.

continue reading this article in the Washington Examiner.