Biology Week Eight: Cell Biology: HIV and AIDS

Until recently we actually had a very strong approach to HIV, in the bay/California anyway. HIV is one service area that used to get very strong funding to reach people in the way that worked for them. Many HIV service organizations are more or less harm refuction based and generally "for us, by us." Meaning that staff at many HIV orgs are either living with HIV, currently or previously high risk for HIV, or have been in the fight since the beginning of the epidemic. There used to be ample funding for HIV specific clinics. Which is really important, especially a place like Oakland where both the rate of HIV and stigma. against HIV are very high. People living with the virus go to great lengths to hide their status, and deal with a lot of stigma even from non-HIV trained providers. So highly specialized clinics staffed with providers with strong counseling skills are crucial in the fight to get to an AIDS free generation. There are finding streams to ensure that anyone living with HIV can access medical care and medicine, as well as other services.

Unfortunately, this is changing. Funding sources have been cut year after year. Now that people are living longer, the powers that be are moving towards integrating HIV care into the medical home model, which would be incredibly problematic!! There's been a move towards focusing on treatment of pos people as prevention and less focus on education and testing/counseling. As the funding goes away and the emphasis on specialized services erodes, we're basically shooting ourselves in the foot.