LFCDC Chairman Visits AIDS Laboratory in New York

Philadelphia BTAN IAVI Visit Report

On Thursday, December 16th, my Philadelphia BTAN Co-Chair Danielle M. Parks and I (John Elliott Churchville) visited and toured the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI) laboratory in Brooklyn, New York. The visit had been arranged by the Black AIDS Institute (BAI). We were joined by Phill Wilson and A. Cornelius Baker, BAI’s President/CEO and Board President, respectively, as well as BAI national staff members and our BTAN counterpart Co-Chairs from Houston, TX and Jackson, MS.

Our day at IAVI began with a welcome breakfast followed by welcoming remarks and a program overview by IAVI’s President and CEO, Seth Berkley. He passionately described IAVI’s world-wide mission to ensure the development of safe, effective, accessible, preventive HIV vaccines for use throughout the world. With offices in Nairobi, Kenya, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, New Delhi, India and Parktown, South Africa, IAVI has not only been able to attract and support some of the world’s brightest and best HIV researchers and scientists, but also to strategically locate them where the results of their work will most directly benefit the people most severely affected by the HIV pandemic. Seth also shared with us his excitement about IAVI’s and partners’ follow-up on their 2009 finding of two new, potent broadly neutralizing antibodies to HIV and identifying their binding site on the virus. Even more potent, broadly neutralizing antibodies were found in 2010 and are currently being studied. (Because HIV mutates early and often, a successful HIV vaccine must contain broadly neutralizing antibodies—i.e., rare substances that recognize and attack multiple variants or mutations of HIV.)

Following Seth’s remarks, Phill Wilson gave a brief history of the 10-year birthing process that brought forth the Black AIDS Institute and the strides that BAI has made since its inception. Then he introduced Jeffrey Crowley, Director of the White House Office of National AIDS Policy.

Jeffrey Crowley shared President Obama’s conviction that despite fiscal limitations, there was bipartisan support for the work of his office, and that he did not anticipate any change in direction stemming from the recent mid-term election results. He encouraged all of us to be familiar with the National HIV Strategy and the National Implementation Plan as starting places for our advocacy work.

A panel discussion followed which was moderated by Lisa Beyer, IAVI’s Senior Vice President for Public Affairs. The panelists featured all the above-named speakers with the addition of Tokes Osubu, CEO of Gay Men of African Descent (GMAD). Immediately after the related Q & A session, we were led on a tour of the facility by Rick King, IAVI’s Laboratory Vice President.

After putting on our laboratory coats, gloves and goggles, we were led into the lab of IAVI’s Principal Scientist, Sanjay Phogat, who, with his world-wide team of colleagues, had discovered the two powerful broadly neutralizing antibodies against HIV, and had identified a target on the virus to which these antibodies bind. I cannot adequately describe the personal impact that meeting this very brilliant, humble, committed and passionate HIV superhero had on me. It is one thing to understand the passion of those of us who are fighting the HIV/AIDS battle in the trenches of counseling, testing and linking persons to care, but it is quite another to experience first-hand the passion exhibited by scientists committed to finding an HIV vaccine that will work anywhere and everywhere in the world to halt all future HIV infections. And Dr. Phogat was not the only passionate and committed scientist that we met at IAVI: every single lab that we visited was headed and staffed by people who were fixated on either: 1) designing and developing vaccine candidates to prevent HIV infection; 2) designing and developing vaccine candidates to control HIV infection; or 3) accelerating vaccine candidates to clinical trials and advancing the most promising to efficacy trials.

The day at IAVI so impacted me that I felt obligated to share its highlights with all of my known co-workers in the HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment arena of struggle. Although our struggle must continue in earnest, there is indeed light at the end of the tunnel…and it is not a freight train headed in our direction. Rather, it is a light of hope and encouragement that everything we do matters. We must believe that our unswerving persistence in this work will eventuate in the successful eradication of HIV as a debilitating disease within our very own lifetime. A luta continua!

BTAN Philadelphia To Offer Focused State-of-the-Art Trainings for HIV Medical Case Managers, Activists and Care Providers in 2011

Co-chairs of BTAN Philadelphia, Danielle M. Parks, Program Director of the Women’s Anonymous Test Site and John Elliott Churchville, Chairman and CEO of Liberation Fellowship CDC, announced today the launching of BTAN Philadelphia’s Information and Advocacy Project set to begin operation in February, 2011.

“Over the past year, Philadelphia’s HIV/AIDS service organizations, spurred on by the federal Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), have transitioned from a social service type case management model to a medical case management model,” said Danielle Parks. “So there’s an increasing need to ensure that medical case managers, care outreach specialists and prevention counseling and testing specialists are well versed in the science behind HIV medical care, treatment and adherence, so that they can be more proactive in assisting their patients to get into treatment earlier and stay in treatment.” Parks went on to explain that Philadelphia BTAN proposes to convene a ten-month medical treatment and care training program for case managers, care outreach specialists, prevention counseling and testing specialists, AIDS Service Providers and community stakeholders. The sessions will be three hours long and are scheduled once-per-month over a 10-month period from February through November, 2011, on the second Thursday of each month.

John Churchville added that the trainings will culminate in an HIV/AIDS symposium to be held in December, 2011, where participants will share with the HIV treatment and advocacy community what they have learned from the training. “This Project contributes to the overarching vision of BTAN by improving the quality of HIV/AIDS treatment and care for Black Americans by providing medical case managers and care outreach specialists with the tools they need to empower patients to begin treatment earlier, better manage and monitor their own care, and adhere to their treatment regimen,” Churchville said. He indicated that the Project goal is to train, motivate and support medical case managers and care outreach specialists in deepening their knowledge of the science of HIV and AIDS. This includes the various medications that are effective in their treatment, and the ways to communicate that knowledge to patients that build the patients’ health literacy and confidence in communicating with health professionals involved in their treatment.

The first training scheduled for Thursday, February 10th will cover HIV Medications: How they work, Common Side Effects, and Adherence Issues. Early registration for the series of 10 free trainings will open on Wednesday, December 15th. To pre-register, contact Danielle M. Parks at dparks@healthfederation.org, or John Elliott Churchville at jchurchville8@gmail.com.

BTAN Philadelphia, is the local affiliate of The Black Treatment Advocates Network (BTAN), a dynamic national network laying the foundation for a new era in Black American HIV/AIDS advocacy. BTAN addresses the disproportionate impact HIV/AIDS has on the Black community by focusing on training, mobilizing and networking to improve HIV/AIDS treatment and care for Black Americans. BTAN, the only collaboration of its kind, links Black Americans with HIV into care and treatment, strengthens local and national leadership, connects influential peers, raises HIV science and treatment literacy in Black communities, and advocates for policy change and research priorities.

LFCDC To Host HIV Awareness Open House

On Wednesday, OCTOBER 27, 2010, Liberation Fellowship CDC will host an HIV Awareness Open House at the VERNON HOUSE (5800 Germantown Avenue) in Vernon Park. The event will run from 10:00 a.m. - 2:00 p.m. and will include a continental breakfast for all who attend.

A presentation including updated information and statistics about HIV in Philadelphia will be provided as well as an open discussion forum about what can be done within the Germantown community to help educate and assist in the prevention of HIV/AIDS.

Come Join us!

LFCDC's Call To Link HIV/AIDS Work To The Environmental Justice Movement

Environmental Justice is that state of affairs in which the last, least and lost of us are able to 1) live in safe, eco-friendly living spaces that promote health and a sense of well-being while having access to the same quality of health care that affluent people enjoy; 2) work in life-affirming pursuits that contribute to the building of social networks that behave like caring extended families while promoting a sustainable green economy; and 3) produce products and services that preserve out planet and add value, meaning and purpose to their own as well as their community’s life. There is no country on the face of the earth that has not been plagued by the HIV/AIDS epidemic. However, in each country the demographic that is hardest hit is the last, least and lost of us—the marginalized poor and oppressed. In the United States of America, that demographic includes African Americans at an alarming rate, as well as Hispanic and Latino populations.

Since the U.S. epidemic began in 1981, more than 560,000 people have died of AIDS. More than one million people in the U.S. are living with HIV, with roughly one quarter of these persons unaware that they are infected. According to epidemiological data gathered for 2006, approximately 56,300 people became infected with HIV. Across America, African Americans made up the highest proportion of new HIV infections with an estimated 24,900 new infections in 2006. For the same year, more infections occurred among young people 13-29 than any other age group, with 19,200 new infections. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, someone in the United States is infected with HIV every 9½ minutes. Although African Americans make up approximately 12% of the U.S. population, we account for nearly 50% of all new HIV diagnoses. In Philadelphia, epidemiological data for 2007 indicate that African Americans made up 61.3% of all new HIV cases reported.

Since it has been shown that race and poverty are predictors of HIV incidence (the number of new HIV/AIDS cases reported during a given time period) and HIV prevalence (the total number of people living with HIV and AIDS) confirms these findings, it seems clear to me that a successful frontal assault on HIV/AIDS in the African American and Latino communities must of necessity be also a frontal assault on poverty and oppression in these communities.

The same demographic that suffers the most from HIV/AIDS is also the demographic that has the highest rates of crime, heart attacks, strokes, high blood pressure, diabetes, cancer, hepatitis C and sexually transmitted diseases. My concern to link the HIV/AIDS struggle with the larger Environmental Justice Movement is motivated by two facts. First, our work in the HIV/AIDS prevention, treatment and linkage to care arena has been placed in a box that virtually limits our conversations to HIV/AIDS activists alone. Second, environmental groups are rather white and insular and lack the vision to see the connection between greening the planet and ending poverty and the diseases and social degradation that accompany it. By enlarging the HIV/AIDS struggle and linking it to the Environmental Justice Movement, we succeed in creating a much larger and expanded network of activists that is inclusive of the last, least and lost of us.

Therefore, the National Brownfields Conference that is coming to Philadelphia from April 3–5, 2011 is the perfect strategic opportunity for us to think outside the box and link our HIV/AIDS education, prevention and treatment movement with the Environmental Justice Movement. The Conference will bring approximately 8,000 people from all over the country to Philadelphia. We have an unprecedented opportunity to frame the HIV/AIDS work that we do in Environmental Justice terms, and to share that work with environmental activists from across the country. For more information on how your organization can participate in the Conference, please contact me, John Elliott Churchville, ASAP at jchurchville8@gmail.com or (215) 848-8511.

Summer Release of LFCDC Chairman's Latest Book

John Elliott Churchville announced the release of his latest book, Leadership Lessons from Jesus. The book focuses on the teachings of Jesus in the four Gospels, and relates them to the current community struggles around issues of fairness and justice. The purpose of Leadership Lessons from Jesus is to showcase the revolutionary nature and content of Jesus’ teachings about the kingdom of God and to present him and his claims outside the traditional framework of religious dogma. The book is published by Infinity Publishing and is available directly online at www.buybooksontheweb.com/product.aspx?ISBN=0-7414-6038-6. It is also available from Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble.

Liberation Fellowship CDC Named Official AmeriCorps ACTS HIV Site

Liberation Fellowship Community Development Corporation (LFCDC) has been named an official AmeriCorps Access to Care Through Service (ACTS) HIV education, outreach, counseling and testing site by The Philadelphia AIDS Consortium (TPAC), creator of the AmeriCorps ACTS national program that serves Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware and California.
Beginning on September 1st, AmeriCorps volunteers will be stationed at LFCDC’s HIV/AIDS counseling and testing site located in historic Vernon House in Germantown’s Vernon Park. They will be engaged in HIV/AIDS awareness through community outreach and education activities.
Created by The Philadelphia AIDS Consortium (TPAC) in 2000, the ACTS program is the first AmeriCorps National Direct volunteer program geared to self-empower individuals who are living with, affected by or wanting to serve as community educators about HIV/AIDS in our communities. Following the format of self-empowering groups facilitated by other organizations across the country, the ACTS program develops an atmosphere of service learning opportunities and various educational programs that enhance volunteers’ lives while having a deep impact on the communities AmeriCorps members serve.
Educational programs offered to volunteers include basic Case Management Skills, Living with HIV/AIDS, Medical Treatments and Oral Health, Cultural Diversity, Managed Care, HIV and Immigration, Sex Education, Self-Esteem, Decision Making, Values Clarification and Developing Job Skills.
LFCDC was founded in 2006 by members of Liberation Fellowship Church of Jesus as a separate stand-alone outreach and community development expression of the church’s commitment to positive and progressive personal and social change. Liberation Fellowship CDC is a federally tax-exempt charitable organization under section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code. Its purpose is to engage in charitable projects and educational activities that develop community leadership skills, encourage low income housing and economic development, provide free HIV counseling and testing services and support green job creation in the Germantown area of Philadelphia. The ultimate goal of the organization is to develop positive, value-laden, replicable program models that are readily adaptable to other urban areas of the country.

New!! "Leadership Lessons From Genesis"

John Elliott Churchville, Ph.D., J.D., Chairman/CEO of Liberation Fellowship CDC announced today the release of his new book, Leadership Lessons from Genesis, a Leadership Development Bible Commentary on the first book of the Bible. “The purpose of the book is to extract kingdom leadership lessons and principles that will encourage, support, and sustain kingdom social activists as they engage in God’s struggle for liberation of the oppressed and social justice for the poor,” Churchville said.

Leadership Lessons from Genesis is the third book that Churchville has published with Infinity Publishing. The other books are Sermons for Subversives and Leadership Lessons from Exodus. Visit our website to learn more.

Liberation Fellowship Church of Jesus' "STRAIGHT UP WORD!" Has A New Home!

Straight Up Word! is a thought provoking Bible study presented by Pastor John Elliott Churchville, Ph.D, J.D.

Each week, Pastor Churchville examines the Bible to gain biblical and spiritual understanding of the leadership lessons that believers can apply in their everyday living.

The program was launched in 2008, and Liberation Fellowship Church of Jesus,has been broadcasting Sunday's at 9:30 a.m. on WNWR 1540 AM. Since then, we gained loyal listeners who have expressed their desire to access the relevant teachings that this program has to offer at any given time as opposed to a certain time frame.

We are pleased to announce that you can now listen to the weekly lessons on our website at www.lfcjnow.com.

To our faithful listeners, this is our way of thanking you!