You can see the video of her testimony here.

You can also check out the entire hearing by clicking here.

HCV, a major cause of chronic liver disease, progresses more rapidly in the body of someone who is infected with HIV. It can also interfere with course and management of an HIV infection. As HIV medications increase the lifespan of people infected with HIV, HCV-related liver disease has become a major cause of hospitilization and death among those infected with HIV.

Join Alphadrugs for a lecture on new therapies for coinfection. It will be presented by Micheal Pistole, and HCV/HIV specialist.

The lecture will be held at the Hotel Palomar, in the Phillips Ballroom, 2121 P Street NW. Registration will begin at 6.30, and the lecture and dinner will start at 7.

To RSVP, or for more information, contact leigh@alphadrugs.com or call 202-265-5757

No matter what issue you work on, I need you to take action to ensure that we preserve the health of DC youth. Whether your issue is asthma, unintentional injuries, teen pregnancy, smoking, nutrition, obesity, drugs and alcohol, LGBT youth, HIV or something else, this impacts us all.

I recently spoke with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Division of Adolescent School Health (DASH) who informed me that the 2009 implementation of the Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance Survey (YRBS) was deemed unusable. DC’s data will not be part of any CDC publication or analysis.

According to my conversation with Dr. Laura Kann from DASH, DC needed to achieve a response rate of 60% of its targeted sample size in order to meet the CDC requirement for accurate, weighted data. DC only managed to reach 36%. In other words we did not meet their requirement - an embarrassment for the city and a huge setback in our city’s attempt to “measure” our successes.

The Office of the State Superintendent of Education (OSSE) is responsible for implementation of the YRBS and has clearly not taken the task seriously. I am concerned that Dr. Briggs and her staff do not take the health of DC youth seriously and that they are not actually interested in progress measures when it comes to health and nutrition. In fact, Dr. Briggs and Dr. Schliker have been dismissive of our community’s offers to support OSSE.

As you may know, the YRBS, conducted every two years by states, cities, and counties, is perhaps the single most important data set we have for monitoring the health behaviors of DC youth. According to the CDC,

“The YRBS assesses six categories of priority health risk behaviors—behaviors that contribute to unintentional injuries and violence; tobacco use; alcohol and other drug use; sexual behaviors that contribute to unintended pregnancy and STDs, including HIV infection; unhealthy dietary behaviors; and physical inactivity—plus overweight and asthma.”

Many of use the YRBS data for our programs and for our grants. From a city-wide perspective, many of us were excited to use YRBS data to objectively measure the city’s efforts to improve the health of its youth and to highlight the challenges that remain.
Amazingly, in these tough economic times, the city will have no usable 2009 youth health data to make the case for additional federal funding!

The next implementation will be in 2011 and those results will not be available until 2012. But planning of that effort must begin now.
Please help us with the following:

1. Please come and testify at the OSSE oversight hearings this Friday (10:00 AM at the Wilson Building, Room 412.) We must tell the Dr. Briggs that this negligence is not acceptable. To testify at the hearing, please contact Aretha Latta at 724-8196 or alatta@dccouncil.us.

2. If you cannot testify in person, please submit written testimony.

3. If you don’t want to testify, come out Friday and support those of us who do.

We have three demands:

1. That OSSE present a written plan on how they will ensure that the 2011 YRBS will be
properly implemented with adequate student and school participation;

2. That the City Council ensure that ALL DC students (DCPS and charter schools) receive high-quality age appropriate Health and Physical Education; and

3. That the City Council clarify OSSE’s responsibility for measuring schools’ and students’ progress in meeting the Health Learning Standards.

Please pass this on to other allied youth health advocates.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me or Josh Rovner, Policy and Advocacy Manager (jrovner@metroteenaids.org).

Thursday, February 25th

10am-12pm

2501 Benning Rd NE

This training is a must for those performing HIV testing in DC!

PEMS (Program Evaluation and Monitoring System) is the data collection system (paperwork) everyone performing HIV testing in DC needs to submit. Keith Floyd and Patrice Ward from the Department of Health will be providing this training. This is a unique opportunity to get all of your questions and concerns answered directly from the source.

Spaces are limited! To reserve a seat, please email Mary Beth Levin (mlevin@preventionworksdc.org).

The goal of POZ is to give the HIV+ community of the DC metro area, and those who are supportive, a safe place to gather, socialize, find new friends, maybe even a date, and of course, morale/emotional support.

For more information check out the POZ Facebook Group, or read this article about Jacob Pring and the POZ Party.

This is not your typical happy hour social. And it is not quite an old-fashioned support group. It is a mixer for gay, positive men in D.C. Why does such a mixer need to exist? Jacob Nathaniel Pring created such a mixer to help ease the tension when one must disclose his status to a potential partner. It’s POZ night on this sublimely frigid Tuesday and it’s been going on now for six weeks. Chris, a regular patron, shares “It’s hard. You have two or three amazing dates and then you have to come to them and say ‘I have something to tell you’. At least here you don’t have to be so dramatic”.

continue reading this article in the Washington Examiner.