Sunday, December 19, 2010

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!

Saturday, December 4, 2010

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.