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SIDEBAR White House declines Brooks interview
by Chuck Colbert
2014-05-21

This article shared 2681 times since Wed May 21, 2014
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For more than a month or so, attempts were made to interview with Douglas M. Brooks, the newly appointed director of the White House Office of National AIDS Policy.

The first request was for a telephone interview. When Shin Inouye, specialty media director at the White House Office of Communications, asked if a written Q&A format would be possible, several questions were submitted.

But after emails back and forth with a reporter in an effort to streamline the questions and reduce their numbers, Inouye said in an April 22 email, "Have been told he won't have time to do this."

Listed below are the submitted questions, which were compiled after consulting widely nationwide with HIV/AIDS service care providers, advocates, and policy experts:

QUESTION: What role can networks of people with HIV—and people with HIV in general—play in response to the epidemic today? They were once so important and today are less so, with less representation on boards, little funding for the networks of people with HIV in comparison to previous years.

QUESTION:: Will we see federal leadership on the issue of criminalization, for example, help in passing US Representative Barbara Lee's ( D-Calif. ) bill, HR 1843? Or will there be help creating an incentive for states to modernize their statutes, similar to the incentive in the original Ryan White CARE Act that invited the states to pass these statutes?

QUESTION: Do you think stigma is increasing or lessening? Will anti-stigma efforts continue to include these major and costly social media campaigns or will they become more focused on empowering those stigmatized?

QUESTION: You have been open about being a black gay man with HIV, which represents a demographic with infection rates that rival Sub-Saharan Africa. How does your being an openly gay African American man, a long-time survivor, help in the efforts to raise awareness of the epidemic among MSM of color—especially youth? From your personal experience, can you speak to the stigma people face when they get infected today? In other words, how does your personal story inform policy, advocacy, and outreach?

QUESTION: How can one justify the rah-rah "We Can End AIDS in Our Lifetime" rhetoric, with the incredible failure to reduce transmission in MSM, especially MSM of color and youth, and other areas where we clearly haven't made progress?

Is that kind of rhetoric necessary to maintain support for programs, the belief that an end is in sight? Or is it ultimately damaging by creating a false view of where we really are?

How can we truly get to an AIDS-free generation?

QUESTION: Legislation has been proposed in Russia to keep a fingerprint database of all people with HIV. With the dramatic increase in criminalization prosecutions in the United States, do you see similarly repressive measures that we'll have to deal with in the years ahead?

QUESTION: What do you see in the future for HIV-specific service agencies and programs? Many think they are going to largely go away in favor of health outreach and service that is more broad-based, since for those acquiring HIV today it seldom is their only health issue.

QUESTION: What concerns do you have for the people with HIV, or those deemed at risk of getting HIV—will they potentially face coercion to go on treatment?

QUESTION: Do you have any qualms about those with HIV CD-4 counts ( T-helper cells ) —- for whom treatment hasn't been demonstrated to deliver a net benefit—being prescribed treatment they believe is for their own personal medical benefit but is sometimes for a public health purpose?

QUESTION: Where do HBV and HCV ( hepatitis B and C )—and, for that matter, HPV—fit into the picture for ONAP and the National AIDS Strategy? Roughly 25 percent of people living with HIV in the U.S. are also co-infected with HCV, and we are now seeing treatments for HCV becoming available that are much more tolerable and have a very high cure rate.

But these treatments are prohibitively expensive and won't be accessible for many of the under served populations that need them. The same is becoming true for HIV, where we see many of the more effective and newer drugs being placed in higher tiers in insurance plans, with co-pays, co-insurance and deductibles putting them out of reach for many.

QUESTION: How can employment training and support help get disabled people with HIV back in the workforce, where possible?

QUESTION: The entire "human rights approach" to the epidemic has faltered in recent years, according to any number of people. How can you provide leadership to get us back with that as a priority?

©Copyright. Chuck Colbert. All rights reserved.

See related coverage at:

http://www.windycitymediagroup.com/lgbt/White-House-AIDS-policy-director-raises-hopes-concerns/47515.html

http://www.windycitymediagroup.com/lgbt/Douglas-Brooks-heads-White-House-office-on-AIDS-policy/47514.html

www.windycitymediagroup.com/lgbt/New-AIDS-czar-HBHC-CEO-honored-in-Boston/47528.htm


This article shared 2681 times since Wed May 21, 2014
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