2012 Final Report: National Women and Girls HIV/AIDS Awareness Day

Each year, joined by many community team members, it has been a great honor working with you to commemorate National Women and Girls HIV/AIDS Awareness Day. This March marked the 5^th year that Community Education Group, Inc. (CEG) developed campaign materials and themes for National Women and Girls HIV/AIDS Awareness Day, an effort supported by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office on Women’s Health. The year proved to be a successful year as CEG, along with you, our community partners, exceeded each of our deliverables on the contract.

Among the successes of this year’s campaign were:

• The development of posters in both English and Spanish for the first time.
• A collaboration with the Greater than AIDS campaign, the National Latino AIDS Action Network and others. 
• The creation of an alliance of 527 community partners from 48 states, all doing their part to ensure that the National HIV/AIDS Strategy lives up to its goals of reducing HIV incidence, increasing access to care and reducing HIV-related health disparities.

From Columbia, South Carolina to Seattle, Washington, there are many more stories of lives that were transformed as a result of this year’s National Women and Girls HIV/AIDS Awareness Day events. In the pages that follow, you can read more of the highlights from functions across the country. A total of 44,995 pieces of campaign materials and giveaways were distributed at various events, including 83 copies of the DVD produced by Gilead Sciences entitled “Many Women One Voice –The African-American Woman and HIV.”  

This campaign would not have been a success without all of our community partners and the many people, organizations, government agencies and corporations who provided support. With the relationships forged and strengthened in the planning of this year’s National Women and Girls HIV/AIDS Awareness Day, we have built a network that together can reach even more people and change more lives in 2013 and beyond. 

As we stand at a crucial point in the fight to end the HIV/AIDS epidemic, it is not too soon to begin building upon this year’s successes. As you are well aware, each year CEG competes for the contract for National Women and Girls HIV/AIDS Awareness Day. To ensure that next year’s observance benefits from the foundation that we have constructed together, we are asking all of our community partners to contact Dr. Nancy Lee, Director of the Office on Women’s Health, to share with Dr. Lee your support for CEG’s continued role in the planning and implementation of National Women and Girls HIV/AIDS Awareness Day. We ask that you let Dr. Lee know how this event has made a difference in your community, and end the letter by saying that you would like to work with CEG again next year to build upon all that we accomplished together in 2012.  Dr. Lee’s email address is Nancy.Lee@hhs.gov.

Thank you to everyone who made National HIV/AIDS Awareness Day 2012 a success. I look forward to creating more deciding moments with you in the future, and I truly appreciate your support in making this possible. The goal is to end the epidemic. 

Sincerely,

A. Toni Young, Executive Director
Community Education Group

Download 2012 Final Report: National Women and Girls HIV/AIDS Awareness Day here

Actress Vanessa Williams Joins Advocates for National Women and Girls HIV/AIDS Awareness Day on March 10th

On March 10th, advocates and officials across the country will be joined by actress Vanessa Williams to take a stand against HIV/AIDS during National Women and Girls HIV/AIDS Awareness Day (NWGHAAD).

Thirty years into the HIV/AIDS epidemic, the disease continues to wield massive influence over the lives of women: HIV/AIDS affects nearly 280,000 women in the United States, a woman is infected with HIV every 47 minutes, and research shows that women living with HIV often face gaps in access to care.

The public awareness campaign, designed to increase understanding of prevention and treatment efforts, features actress Vanessa Williams as the national spokesperson. Her role comes during the run-up to a national tour of her one-woman show “Feet on the Ceiling," featuring stories of sexual revelations for women, the pursuit of love, and the consequences of risky sexual behavior.

"I am honored and humbled to join my sisters in the Hollywood community in adding our voices to the fight against HIV/AIDS. We have all been touched by this awful disease. We are painfully aware that for women in general and particularly black women, every moment is a deciding moment," said Vanessa Williams, 2012 National Women and Girls HIV/AIDS Awareness Day spokesperson and board member of the Black AIDS Institute.

With events in more than 80 cities across the country, this year’s campaign also includes the dissemination 10,000 posters providing information about HIV/AIDS in English, and another 5,000 will be produced in Spanish, a first for NWGHAAD.

The collaboration to produce NWGHAAD features an impressive number of participants, including Community Education Group, The Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) Office on Women’s Health, The Black AIDS Institute, the Kaiser Family Foundation’s Greater Than AIDS campaign, and the National Latino AIDS Action Network.

“Women across the country are waking up to the fact that they cannot take their health for granted,” said A. Toni Young, Executive Director of Community Education Group. “With that empowerment comes the strength to make healthy choices for one’s self, family, and community. We’re proud of this collaboration that informs, but also empowers women and girls to know that they are greater than AIDS, no matter what the statistics say.”

“HIV isn’t what it was 30 years ago. We have the power to end it,” said Tina Hoff, Senior Vice President and Director, Health Communication and Media Partnerships, Kaiser Family Foundation, which provides strategic guidance and day-to-day management for Greater Than AIDS. “This campaign can leverage the resources of the public and private sector to connect those most in need with information and services.”

Learn more at nwghaad.org.

About NWGHAAD
National Women and Girls HIV/AIDS Awareness Day is an annual nationwide observance of HIV/AIDS’ impact on women and girls. Each year, the Office on Women’s Health works with organizations across the country to create opportunities for women and girls to learn about HIV prevention, the importance of HIV testing and how those living with HIV/AIDS can better manage the disease.

About Community Education Group
Founded in 1993 as the National Women and HIV/AIDS Project (NWAP), the Community Education Group (CEG) seeks to stop the spread of HIV and eliminate health disparities by training community health workers, and educating and testing the hard-to-reach population. CEG also regularly shares its expertise with other organizations through national networks and local capacity building efforts. Today, CEG operates eight mobile testing units in Wards 7 and 8 in the District of Columbia and conducts HIV counseling and testing while linking clients to care.

About Greater Than AIDS
Greater Than AIDS is a national media campaign that seeks to increase the public’s knowledge and understanding of HIV/AIDS and reduce the stigma surrounding it. With the Kaiser Family Foundation providing the strategic direction and day-to-day management of the campaign and the Black AIDS Institute providing leadership and technical assistance, the campaign is particularly focused on the severe and disproportionate epidemic among Black Americans.

About the Office on Women’s Health
Since 1991, The Office on Women’s Health (OWH) has been improving the health of American women by advancing and coordinating a comprehensive women’s health agenda throughout the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Both health care prevention and service delivery have been critical components of the OWH’s work, and it has created programs and disseminated health information in an effort to develop and impact national health policy as it relates to women and girls.

About the National Latino AIDS Action Network
The National Latino AIDS Action Network (NLAAN) mobilizes, educates, and advocates on national, state and local levels to prevent HIV infection, increase access to care and treatment, and inform research efforts that address the needs of diverse Latino communities.

Sign on to Keep the Momentum of the National HIV/AIDS Strategy

We invite your organization to endorse the sign on statement below. One year into the National HIV/AIDS Strategy, the statement reaffirms support for the goals of the Strategy and lays out some principles we think are important to success. If your organization would like to endorse this statement, please contact Kate at kate.goertzen@amfar.org

Keep the Momentum of the National HIV/AIDS Strategy

The National HIV/AIDS Strategy (NHAS) has become a catalyst for progressive change that has already begun to improve the United States' approach to ending our HIV epidemic. We strongly support NHAS goals to lower the rate of new HIV infections, improve access to care and care outcomes, and reduce health disparities in the epidemic. People across the country are responding to the Strategy's vision of a more effective, equitable and outcomes-oriented response to AIDS.

Achieving the NHAS goals will require that all of us take a fresh look at how resources are allocated and the kinds of services supported, and make difficult decisions about future efforts. It will take concerted action by federal, state, and local government, health care providers, community organizations, the private sector, and people living with and affected by HIV. We must develop a response to AIDS that does better at addressing the challenges where they are most acute, but that also improves outcomes for every group affected by the epidemic no matter where they reside.

We are at a pivotal moment in tackling the domestic epidemic. New research demonstrating the HIV prevention impact of AIDS treatment provides additional reasons to coordinate services and bring to scale our efforts, and emboldens our belief that we can achieve dramatic progress against the epidemic.

To take advantage of this opportunity, and to sustain the momentum in achieving NHAS goals, the following principles are essential:

· Increased resources are needed, and we also must do better to ensure that current resources are used for maximum impact.

· All those who need AIDS treatment must have access. The AIDS Drug Assistance Program must be fully funded.

· Federal agencies need to become more outcomes-oriented and reduce the burden on local and state agencies by streamlining reporting requirements and funding streams, and demonstrating true cross-agency collaboration.

· A new model of integrated service provision is critical to success, emphasizing the connections between testing, prevention, linkage to care and treatment, and seeking community-level results and measurable outcomes. This model must include addressing unmet needs for housing and substance abuse and mental health services.

· Tools for evidence-based decision making, such as economic modeling and creative use of surveillance data that maintains confidentiality can increase the impact of our efforts.

· The "12 Cities" initiative can improve outcomes in epicenters, be a driver of health services reform, and develop adaptable models to be used elsewhere, but success requires ongoing funding, and increased coordination and accountability at the local, state and federal levels. Additional attention is also needed in areas outside of these 12 cities, including those experiencing alarming growth in HIV incidence.

· The NHAS is strengthened by authentic community engagement, and this engagement requires transparency about 12 Cities and other local and state strategies and plans.

· Recipients of federal funds must be held accountable for dedicating resources to geographic areas and communities according to their epidemic profile.

· Health departments, community organizations, and private providers need advanced levels of technical support to transition to integrated models of prevention and care service provision and community-level interventions.

We ask federal agencies to embrace and take action consistent with the principles above. We also know that the success of the National HIV/AIDS Strategy depends on all of us. Policy makers, people on the front lines, and everyone engaged, must work together, reassess how we can have the greatest impact, and rededicate ourselves toending AIDS in America.

Is there a vaccine for HIV? No, but there could be with your help...

As a NHVREI Network member, we understand the critical role that HIV vaccine development plays in reducing the spread of the epidemic and to ultimately prevent new infections. Our work, as our name suggests, is focused on the community-wide response to the epidemic and we understand, and public health history has shown, that a vaccine will likely be the most powerful tool to use against the spread of the virus. We hope to increase our community’s literacy and exposure to HIV vaccine research through updating our current literature on the topic.

Download the pocket sized vaccine brochure HERE