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The National HIV/AIDS Strategy (NHAS) has guided our national response to the domestic HIV epidemic since its initial release in July of 2010. Six years later, while substantial progress has been made in several key areas of the strategy, progress in others have stalled, according to a new Indicator Supplement released just last week by the White House’s Office of National AIDS Policy to celebrate the six-year anniversary of the NHAS.
Significant adjustments have been made to estimates of the number of trans-identified individuals. According to research released by the Williams Institute late last month, there are 1.4 million trans identified adults in the U.S. This is roughly double the estimate made by the Williams Institute in 2011, and brings the percentage of the adult population who identify as trans up to .6% - an increase attributed to a wider data pool created when 19 states opted to include a question on gender identity in their reporting to the CDC’s Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System.
Puerto Rico is between a rock and a hard place when it comes to health services, especially HIV/AIDS.
Few Supreme Court decisions have been as consequential to women’s health in Texas and nationally as Whole Woman's Health v. Hellerstedt. In a 5-to-3 ruling last month, the Court struck down a Texas law that made it more difficult to get an abortion and reaffirmed constitutional protections on reproductive freedom.
Following the Democratic National Convention, Secretary Hillary Clinton published a press release which describes her plan to combat the HIV/AIDS epidemic if she becomes president and highlighted the speech of Daniel Driffin a man living with HIV from Atlanta. The press release described three main components of her plan, including convening an “End the Epidemic” working group, fully implementing and strengthening the National HIV/AIDS Strategy, and launching a campaign to reduce the stigma and discrimination faced by those living with HIV.
Congress left Washington three weeks ago for its seven-and-a-half-week recess in order to hold the two national political conventions. Now it’s time for the Policy Update to take a summer break. We’ll be back after Labor Day. Of course, while we hope all of you will find some time to relax, we don’t want you to forget policy and advocacy completely. Here are a few things to keep in mind and get ready for in September.
On July 26th, the 2016 Democratic National Convention (DNC) began in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. During the convention, Secretary Hillary Clinton officially became the Democratic presidential nominee, making her the first woman to ever be nominated by a major political party in the United States. The convention brought together politicians, celebrities, and Americans to unify the Democratic Party behind the presumptive candidate, despite heavy protests from the “Bernie or Bust” movement and the resignation of the DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz following the WikiLeaks of top DNC officials' emails. The leaked emails suggested that committee staff complained about and brainstormed ways to spin the media against Senator Bernie Sanders’ (I-VT) campaign, despite the expectation that the DNC should remain neutral during the primary. The content of these emails further infuriated some Sanders supporters and delegates–leading to protests that flared up at times throughout the convention.
“Bringing the marginalized to the center of attention,” could have been the subtheme for this year’s International AIDS Conference held July 18-23, 2016 in Durban, South Africa. Access, Equity, and Rights Now was the conference’s official theme. It demanded that we focus on key populations affected by HIV that countries and communities often ignore, shun, criminalize, and stigmatize.
On July 12th, exactly one month after the horrifying massacre at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform held a hearing on H.R. 2802, the First Amendment Defense Act (FADA). I attended this hearing on behalf of AIDS United.