Between Promise & Performance: Condoms
Promise & Performance:
Leadership | Condom Distribution | HIV Testing | X-Pres
The Promise: On two separate occassions, HAA has pledged to distribute a million condoms. The first of these pledges was made by Marsha Martin at the Washington Times Citizens Forum on HIV/AIDS on October 14th, 2006. Then when Dr. Gregg Pane took over responsibility for HAA He repeated the plan to distribute condoms in an article in the Examiner.
So they've been talking about this for about eight months. Surely, they've distributed a million condoms by now, right? After all the New York City Department launched a similar campaign around the same time, and they distribute anywhere from three to five million condoms each month
The Performance: DC Department of Health has not come close to distributing a million condoms. But what is even worse than that, is that they are misrepresenting how many condoms have actually been distributed.
When I hear the word 'distributed', I assume that this means condoms are available to folks who need them. When HAA uses the word 'distributed' they mean that boxes of condoms (and responsibility) has been passed on to other people.
And that's exactly where we are. In February HAA 'distributed' the first 250,000 condoms, but the vast majority of these condoms are sitting in boxes in closets, and hallways, and basements, and will not be made available to anyone anytime soon. If you don't believe me I will gladly take a film crew to show you box after box of 'distributed' condoms sitting in less than optimal storage conditions.
The biggest flaw with the HAA plan is that they gave 120,00 of these condoms to LifeGuard DC, an almost entirely volunteer effort. LifeGuard is a great group of volunteers, to be sure, I volunteered with them myself. But they were in no way equipped to handle this number of condoms. Up to this point, Lifeguard had successfully distributed around 8,000 condoms through two distributions points.
HAA didn't ask Lifeguard to double their volunteer effort, or triple it even. HAA gave them fourteen-times that number of condoms (120,000) with no financial assistance and no additional support and conveniently handed off responsibility declaring these condoms had been 'distributed' to the community.
Fast forward a few months later and it's no suprise that with no money and no support, the overworked and underappreciated LifeGuard volunteers haven't distributed anywhere near 120,000 condoms. Back in February, I wrote this post specifically to warn that relying too heavily on volunteers for this plan was a bad idea. Clearly, that was true. Lifeguard is not expected to continue distributing any condoms after August. The vast majority of these condoms are sitting in the basement of one of the volunteers.
Still the message HAA is giving the mainstream press is very, very different. HAA told the Washington post that 250,00 Condoms had been deployed in February of 2007. HAA continued to give exaggerated numbers at the DC Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy Best Practices Coalition Meeting. We know better.
You can see the breakdown of where the first 250,000 condoms were 'distributed' here. A second batch of condoms arrived at HAA in March, but it's not clear where those were 'distributed'.
Bottom line, HAA has not reached this goal. To distribute a million condoms, HAA is going to need to come up with a plan that is more substantive that simply passing the buck to the Lifeguard volunteers.
New York City Department of Health successfully distributes between three and five million condoms each and every month through an effective network of hundreds of distribution points. Compare that to DC. Lifeguard has two distribution points. If you look at all the agencies that received condoms, HAA had maybe 20 distribution points total for this effort.
Distributing a million condoms in DC is a realistic and achievable goal. It is crucial to our efforts to prevent HIV in DC. But it is a goal that HAA has not yet met.
Leadership | Condom Distribution | HIV Testing | X-Pres
Condom Distribution
Condom distribution is an essential service health departments provide, but for some time now, the DC Department of Health HIV/AIDS Administration (HAA) has fallen short.The Promise: On two separate occassions, HAA has pledged to distribute a million condoms. The first of these pledges was made by Marsha Martin at the Washington Times Citizens Forum on HIV/AIDS on October 14th, 2006. Then when Dr. Gregg Pane took over responsibility for HAA He repeated the plan to distribute condoms in an article in the Examiner.
So they've been talking about this for about eight months. Surely, they've distributed a million condoms by now, right? After all the New York City Department launched a similar campaign around the same time, and they distribute anywhere from three to five million condoms each month
The Performance: DC Department of Health has not come close to distributing a million condoms. But what is even worse than that, is that they are misrepresenting how many condoms have actually been distributed.
When I hear the word 'distributed', I assume that this means condoms are available to folks who need them. When HAA uses the word 'distributed' they mean that boxes of condoms (and responsibility) has been passed on to other people.
And that's exactly where we are. In February HAA 'distributed' the first 250,000 condoms, but the vast majority of these condoms are sitting in boxes in closets, and hallways, and basements, and will not be made available to anyone anytime soon. If you don't believe me I will gladly take a film crew to show you box after box of 'distributed' condoms sitting in less than optimal storage conditions.
The biggest flaw with the HAA plan is that they gave 120,00 of these condoms to LifeGuard DC, an almost entirely volunteer effort. LifeGuard is a great group of volunteers, to be sure, I volunteered with them myself. But they were in no way equipped to handle this number of condoms. Up to this point, Lifeguard had successfully distributed around 8,000 condoms through two distributions points.
HAA didn't ask Lifeguard to double their volunteer effort, or triple it even. HAA gave them fourteen-times that number of condoms (120,000) with no financial assistance and no additional support and conveniently handed off responsibility declaring these condoms had been 'distributed' to the community.
Fast forward a few months later and it's no suprise that with no money and no support, the overworked and underappreciated LifeGuard volunteers haven't distributed anywhere near 120,000 condoms. Back in February, I wrote this post specifically to warn that relying too heavily on volunteers for this plan was a bad idea. Clearly, that was true. Lifeguard is not expected to continue distributing any condoms after August. The vast majority of these condoms are sitting in the basement of one of the volunteers.
Still the message HAA is giving the mainstream press is very, very different. HAA told the Washington post that 250,00 Condoms had been deployed in February of 2007. HAA continued to give exaggerated numbers at the DC Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy Best Practices Coalition Meeting. We know better.
You can see the breakdown of where the first 250,000 condoms were 'distributed' here. A second batch of condoms arrived at HAA in March, but it's not clear where those were 'distributed'.
Bottom line, HAA has not reached this goal. To distribute a million condoms, HAA is going to need to come up with a plan that is more substantive that simply passing the buck to the Lifeguard volunteers.
New York City Department of Health successfully distributes between three and five million condoms each and every month through an effective network of hundreds of distribution points. Compare that to DC. Lifeguard has two distribution points. If you look at all the agencies that received condoms, HAA had maybe 20 distribution points total for this effort.
Distributing a million condoms in DC is a realistic and achievable goal. It is crucial to our efforts to prevent HIV in DC. But it is a goal that HAA has not yet met.
Labels: condoms, promise and performance
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
Links to this post:
Create a Link
<< Home