SisterLove, Inc: 23 Years and Counting

In the midst of the 19^th International AIDS Conference, and in light of all the new developments and technologies in HIV/AIDS prevention, treatment, and advocacy, SisterLove, Incorporated stands in a definite celebratory spirit. And today, we celebrate yet another milestone…23 years of providing HIV prevention, education, and advocacy services for women of color!

At today’s conference plenary session I had the pleasure of listening to the beautiful and poignant Linda Scruggs, one of SisterLove’s own 20/20 Leading Women’s Society Members and Honorees. She addressed the subject “Making Women Count: A Comprehensive Agenda.” This phenomenal HIV positive woman addressed a room of over 7,000 researchers, community workers, scientists, and lay health workers from across the globe by saying, “Today I stand here to give you some directions. As women we are going to stop asking for you to include us. We figured that maybe you just need the recipe.” And a recipe she did give. She spoke about the need for women to be included on both the community level and the corporate level, in research and in dissemination. “If we are going turn the tide on HIV, we need to accurately include all women.”

Indeed, 30 years into the epidemic we still have to drive the conversation around the absolute inclusion of women, especially women of color, in the movement to eradicate HIV/AIDS throughout the globe. We have to actively engage researchers in remembering to include women of color when talking about Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis (PreP) and other clinical treatments. We must support the critical work of campaigns such as the 30 for 30 to ensure that a minimum of 30% of the national resources for HIV/AIDS are given to organizations that directly serve women. We have to rally at the local, regional, and national level to ensure that policies and plans such as the National AIDS Strategy directly include women.

Linda Scruggs made such an important point today at the close of her speech: “We don’t have another 30 years. As women, we don’t need another 30 years. We need you to act now.” I couldn’t agree more. There is no time like the present.

I’m an action oriented person. I typically need to follow a plan of action to move from one space to another. So on this, SisterLove’s 23^rd anniversary, I would like to call you, my brothers, my sisters, and my fellow community members to full action TODAY. First action item: Know Your Own Status and Love Responsibly. At this stage in the game it is imperative that we take personal responsibility for ourselves and the individuals we are choosing to have sex with. Protect yourself. Protect them. Second action item: Educate yourself  and your circle on the new policies, treatments, and research in HIV/AIDS. There are a number of new findings that have come out in 2012 alone regarding new treatment, new interventions, treatment as prevention, and strategies that are working to reduce the incidence and prevalence of HIV throughout the world. HIV is a real issue. HIV is a community issue. HIV is a human rights issue. We can no longer sit idle on the side lines pretending that we are not affected. If you are living, breathing and reading this message, you are affected. Third action item: Get DIRECTLY involved! I know it’s a busy time for many. We have the kids, the husband, the wife, the job, and the social life. We don’t have time to get involved in community issues. At this point, we just cannot afford not be involved. You can volunteer with your local AIDS service organization. You can talk to your partner, your mother, your father, and your children about HIV/AIDS and the need for testing. You can DONATE money to organizations such as SisterLove to make sure that our mission continues to be fulfilled. You can walk up to an HIV positive person and give them a big hug because we still live in a world that has stigmatized both men and women living with HIV/AIDS.

Throughout the conference we have been talking about the possibilities of 2012 being the beginning of the end of HIV. I’m not completely sold on that idea, but I do know that we have made great strides. What I do believe is that if we are going to get to the end of HIV, must include ideas, strategies, plans, and resources that directly include women of color in every nook and cranny of this pandemic. And with 23 years under its belt, SisterLove is in a perfect position to continue to lead these efforts.

Congratulations to us all for the strides we have made. Continue to do your part.

With a Sisters Love,

Omi

Omisegun Pennick 

SisterLove,Inc 

tpennick@sisterlove.org

www.sisterlove.org

Twitter Handle: @Omisegun

SisterLove's Youth Leadership

S. Jackson

Sisterlove, Inc Staff

Two of our young staff members are members of two separate programs. Shanebrae Price is a 2011 Black AIDS Institute African American HIV University Fellow. Shantrell Jackson is a 2011 Sierra Club Global Population and Environment (GPE) fellow. The Sierra Club GPE fellowship is a nationwide six-month fellowship program that equips outstanding working young/student activists leaders with continual training, resources and mentorship to implement self-designed campaigns that elevate population, sexual and reproductive health and rights, and environmental protection among youth audiences (www.sierraclub.org) .

This blog is for her Sierra Club GPE fellowship but its purpose is to celebrate Shanebrae Price (SisterLove’s HIV Outreach, Advocacy and Prevention Specialist) and a Black AIDS Institute African American HIV University (AAHU) fellow. In this blog you will be able to understand the role she plays at AAHU and her community mobilization project.

What is African American HIV University?

AAHU is a comprehensive training and internship fellowship program. The program is designed to decrease HIV stigma and misperception and increase the engagement of the Black community in HIV prevention and treatment services. See (www.blackaids.org) for more information on AAHU and visit the website.

Shanebrae what are you doing as a fellow in this program?

I am conducting a project that is focused on mobilizing the family planning and teen pregnancy prevention community. I am partnering with Lytani Wilson with the Center for Black Women’s Wellness to start the community mobilization project.

Where are you thus far in the community mobilization project?

As of right now we have accomplished two different phases of the AAHU program. The first quarter at AAHU we focused on a “needs assessment”. We conducted a gap analysis and assessed the needs of our target audience - Black adolescent females. The second  quarter we returned to AAHU for a week to learn “coalition building”. Coalition building is when we established a core team and bring together a group of advocates and educators interested in family planning and teen pregnancy prevention to form the coalition. There are four different meetings in Los Angeles and each meeting is one week long. We learn the tools that it takes to successfully accomplish each phase of the training and internship.

What do you want as the desired outcome with this project?

I would like establish partnerships between organizations that provide health education to the youth population and family planning to prevent teen pregnancy in the Atlanta. Our ultimate goal is incorporate HIV and Sexually Transmitted Infections (STI)  prevention into their curriculum.

Why did you choose to apply and participate in Black AIDS Institute AAHU?

 I chose to apply and participate in AAHU for professional growth and leadership development; to establish relationships, network and to build programs from the ground up.

Do you have any other comments Shanebrae?

The AAHU helps me understand the intricate details required to develop and implement a program. Before you take action you have to have a plan. AAHU is also teaching us the core components of public health evaluation. This program enhances both personal and professional growth.

(Be the change you want to see in the world *Gandhi*)

The Global Pandemic of HIV

N. Wright-Jegede
SisterLove, Inc Intern

Across many countries, the HIV/AIDS pandemic is an issue of major concern. Worldwide, the virus has become a human, social, political and economic misfortune for millions of individuals. While the nation-states of Sub-Saharan Africa have been hit the hardest by this devastating epidemic, the virus has increased at a staggering rate, across many parts of Central Asia, Eastern Europe, and Russia. The adversative impact of HIV/AIDS has caused the stability and security of populations, economies and governments to destabilize. As the virus continues to deter the quality and quantity of life, global policies and strategies which prevent HIV/AIDS remain a matter of vital interest and concern. No other illness has so vividly pointed-out the current inequalities in health-care access, economic stability, and the protection of human rights. Protecting one’s basic human right is extremely critical in the global fight against HIV. Sadly enough, the transgressions against individual rights can propel the spread of infection tenfold. Every day, HIV infected-individuals confront many obstacles, such as: achieving assured confidentiality or, overcoming social stigma and discrimination.

Therefore, responding assertively to these adversities must be global in its scope. Preventing the spread of HIV/AIDS requires effective comprehensive strategies and programs that work to safeguard and uphold individual human rights. However, these pivotal changes will not transpire if the information and skills needed to fight HIV/AIDS remains inside the sphere of public health experts; government officials and, researchers presently driving efforts to eradicate the pandemic. These endeavors can only emerge through the collective action of international partnerships, which can harvest positive results. In order to become effective in the global eradication against HIV, a comprehensive HIV prevention strategy requires strong political leadership. This means, policymakers and world-leaders in all localities must speak-out vocally about HIV/AIDS and, not back away from challenging issues like sex or reproductive health. A successful response requires strategic planning based upon high quality research, and careful consideration of local culture. We should all take action in the response, including non-governmental organizations, HIV-positive individuals, educators, employers and religious leaders. Around the world, efforts to reduce HIV, and mitigate its impact have been led by the affected communities themselves. The epidemic thrives upon prejudice, stigma, and discrimination related to those living with the virus. The spread of HIV is also driven by gender inequality, which limits what we can do as women to protect ourselves from infection. Protecting and promoting a worldwide respect for human rights should be an important part of any comprehensive HIV prevention program. Of course, this involves enacting laws against various forms of stigma and discrimination which impels vulnerability. Get active! It’s time to talk with our legislators. Policymakers need to be well-informed about the reality of HIV/AIDS, and the challenges it has created worldwide.

HIV Criminalization

A. Watanabe
SisterLove, Inc Intern

As a summer intern for SisterLove, I’m helping with policy research on HIV criminalization in Georgia and the South – criminal laws that specifically target HIV transmission, or actions that pose the risk of transmission, without disclosure of one’s HIV status. The specifics of the laws vary from state to state; some of them don’t even require the intent to transmit, or for actual transmission of HIV to happen. Many states consider these “crimes” to be felonies, with prison sentences as long as twenty or thirty years. At first, for many people, the policy seems just: most would agree that intentional or reckless transmission of HIV is wrong.

But when you look at how these laws actually play out on the ground, you’ll find that HIV-specific criminal statues violate the human rights of HIV-positive people, are ineffective public health policy, and promote unscientific, stigma-based ideas about how HIV is transmitted. The Positive Justice Project found that 25% of HIV-related prosecutions between 1986 and 2001 involved biting, spitting or scratching, which carry virtually no risk of HIV transmission. Even so, Georgia and many other states continue to include these acts in their criminal statutes. These laws undermine efforts to promote accurate information about HIV, which is crucial to prevention.


Anti-criminalization advocates also argue that these laws, by placing the responsibility of prevention solely with people who know that they are HIV-positive, undermine the important message that everyone is responsible for protecting themselves from STDs. And these laws can discourage people from getting tested because not knowing your status can protect you from being prosecuted. This is especially dangerous when research has shown that HIV is generally transmitted by people who are unaware of their own status, not by people who knowingly or intentionally transmit it. In cases of sexual assault, or other exceptional situations in which transmission was clearly intentional, general criminal laws are sufficient to prosecute individuals, and HIV-specific laws are unnecessary.


The issue goes deeper than ineffective policy, though – it is well known that the United States leads the world in incarceration, having just 5% of the world’s population but 25% of the world’s prisoners, the vast majority for non-violent offenses. And the rates of incarceration are grossly disproportionate for people of color, especially African-Americans and Latinos. Though many racial justice advocates have called for alternatives to mass incarceration, the prison population has continued to grow for the last few decades. And so it’s not surprising that the United States would again turn to criminalization as a “solution” to HIV, instead of pursuing desperately needed public health and human rights-centered policies. A health issue is quickly turned into a moral issue through these dramatic and harsh criminal laws – reminiscent of the way that abstinence-only education rather than comprehensive sex education was used to respond to the spread of HIV, despite its proven ineffectiveness.


The laws especially target communities that are already stigmatized– for example, clause 3 and 4 of Georgia’s law specifically mentions sex work and “sodomy”, even though these acts would already be covered in clause 1, which specifies “any sexual act involving the sex organs of one person and the mouth or anus of another” and “sexual intercourse.” These laws are sending a clear message: that HIV is spread by “criminal” and marginalized communities – sex workers, intravenous drug users, and men who have sex with men – rather than placing the responsibility where it really lies. The United States has such a high HIV rate (the highest in the industrialized world) because policymakers continue to ignore the real causes of HIV: poor sex education, poverty, stigma, homelessness, lack of rehabilitative services for substance users, lack of adequate healthcare, gender inequity, sexual assault, and so on. Turning to criminal law as a “preventative” measure ignores the bigger issues that are actually at the root of HIV.


The fact that women of color are among the hardest hit by HIV/AIDS is not accidental: HIV/AIDS is deeply tied to social inequality. And because many of the communities at the greatest risk of HIV are also at the greatest risk of being criminalized in general, we can easily imagine who will pay the price. For women of color, who disproportionately face risks of gender violence, poverty, and lack of access to medical care – these women, even if they are not personally prosecuted by HIV transmission laws, will undoubtedly be impacted by the stigma and fear that these laws promote. Every time someone chooses not to get tested for fear of being prosecuted; every time someone is misinformed about how HIV is spread; every time the stigma and discrimination that HIV-positive people already face is made worse by these criminal laws; every time policymakers vote in favor of criminalization while ignoring the real issues that cause the spread of HIV– women of color, who are already vulnerable to so many of the social issues connected to HIV/AIDS, will be affected in some way, as will their families and communities.



I think that when the topic of criminalization of HIV comes up, people often struggle with the most notorious examples of intentional or reckless HIV transmission and how these cases should be handled. But I think that the questions we ask have to be deeper than, “is punishing people in this worst-case scenario the right thing to do?” The bigger picture questions we need to ask are: What does criminalization accomplish? How and when are the laws applied? What message do these laws send? Do these policies actually help stop the spread of HIV? And, who do these laws hurt?



As citizens and community members, we have to keep educating ourselves and others about what real solutions to HIV look like. We can support prevention strategies instead of criminalization – by spreading accurate information about HIV, encouraging people to get tested, and promoting safer sex practices such as condom use, among many others. We can support HIV-positive people in our communities facing stigma and fear of criminalization, and when organizations like SisterLove or the Center for HIV Law & Policy advocate for policy changes, they will need people to stand behind them.


More resources about HIV criminalization policies, who they impact, and how to advocate against them:

Positive Justice Project: A New Strategy to End Civil and Criminal Punishment and Discrimination on the Basis of HIV Status (2010). http://www.hivlawandpolicy.org/resources/view/563

Positive Justice Project: HIV Criminalization Fact Sheet (2010). http://www.hivlawandpolicy.org/resources/view/560

Open Society Institute: 10 Reasons To Oppose the Criminalization of HIV Exposure or Transmission (2008). http://www.hivlawandpolicy.org/resources/view/318

Positive Justice Project: What HIV Criminalization Means to Women in the U.S. (2011). http://www.hivlawandpolicy.org/resources/view/584

Positive Justice Project: Ending and Defending Against HIV Criminalization: State and Federal Laws and Prosecutions, A Manual for Advocates (2010). http://www.hivlawandpolicy.org/resources/view/564

Positive Justice Project: Guidance for People Living with HIV Who Are At Risk of, or Are Facing, Criminal Prosecution for HIV Nondisclosure or Exposure (2011). http://www.hivlawandpolicy.org/resources/view/580

Domestic Violence: A Risk Factor for HIV/AIDS?

T.Kimbrough
SisterLove, Inc Intern


It is quite alarming to note that black women are 15 times more likely to be diagnosed with HIV than our white counterparts (CDC, 2011). The question is why? With the amount of knowledge and free HIV testing available today, you would expect for our numbers to decrease. But for some strange reason, our numbers are increasing.

It is estimated that nearly half (45%) of new HIV infections are in the black population (CDC,2011). Researchers attributed this rise to specific sexual risk factors that seem to be prevalent within our community. Risk patterns such as unprotected sex, injection drug use, multiple sex partners and even domestic violence? Domestic violence is now being associated as a risk factor for HIV (Wingood et al, 1997; Raiford et al, 2009).

Women, who are in physically abusive relationships, are less likely to negotiate for the use of condoms with their partner (Wingood et al, 1997; Raiford et al, 2009). They are also more likely to reason that their chance of acquiring HIV is not as likely as their fear of being physically abused for refusing sexual advances. Even though they are knowledgeable about HIV/STD transmission, they would rather take a chance with acquiring HIV by engaging in unprotected sex than to advocate for condom use and risk the threat of their partner leaving them or even abusing them.

Where do you draw the line? Ask yourself which is more important to you; your sex life or your health? The choice is yours. Choose health. Ask yourself what can I do to protect my health? Seek solutions to commonly asked questions like: How can I better negotiate with my partner for condom use?; What proactive measures I can take to prevent the transmission of HIV/STDs?; How can I build better communication between my partner and I so that I can openly and freely discuss issues that I am concerned about?; Where can I go to get advice and counseling that can help me advocate for the things I feel are best for?

SisterLove, Inc is an organization that can help you with many of these concerns. SisterLove, Inc offers a free “Healthy Love session” that discusses HIV/STD transmission and prevention. The Healthy Love parties offer information about safe sex practices with emphasis upon condom negotiation and proper condom use. Once you learn how to feel comfortable discussing your sexual health needs and gain confidence in proper condom use, you will be more confident in your sexual health practices.

Contact SisterLove, Inc and find out when and where the next Healthy Love party. Come and have fun! Learn how to have better sex and safer sex. Visit us online: www.sisterlove.org.



References

Centers of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC,2011), HIV/AIDS and African Americans, Retrieved July 11, 2011 from http://www.cdc.gov/hiv/topics/aa/index.htm

Raiford, J., DiClemente, R., & Wingood, G. (2009). Effects of fear of abuse and possible STI acquisition on the sexual behavior of young African American women. American Journal of Public Health, 99(6), 1067-1071. doi:10.2105/AJPH.2007.131482

Wingood, G., & DiClemente, R. (1997). The effects of an abusive primary partner on the condom use and sexual negotiation practices of African-American women. American Journal Of Public Health, 87(6), 1016-1018. Retrieved from EBSCOhost