"Be yeast and rise and expand the world that you are in," Deb Hauser the Executive Vice President and incoming Executive Director of Advocates for Youth stirred the crowd this rainy morning here at the Washington Court Hotel as youth from across the world gather...

The Urban Retreat 2011 is open and in full effect! All of the groups, Youth Resource, Young Women of Color Leadership Council, CAMI: SC, FL, OH, TX; Campus Organizers; Contraceptive Access; IYLC, iYSO, and  iGLBTQ... Deb has said hi, three amazing youth brought hellos and thoughts of the occasion and now James is wrapping up his speech...#translation GREEN LIGHT FOR FUN, FUN, FUN and YOUTH-LED Workshops! 

#UR2011 #AMPthis #UR2011

The FDA (Food and Drug Administration) has approved a 60 second HIV test... YES let me repeat that... 60 SECONDS and you will have your HIV status... I am speechless.  The new test called INSTI by bioLytical Laboratories of Canada will test for HIV-1 Antibodies very similar to UniGold which is commonly used presently throughout community based organizations and AIDS services organizations. We are  embarking onto new territory with Rapid Testing. 

Testing is a very serious ordeal when an individual decide to learn there status and I am afraid that 60 seconds isn't enough time to provide Pre and/or Post Test Counseling which is recommended when a person is being tested... 

So what do you think about 60 seconds or less? I can't wait to see your responses!

There are a few days a year that I am really excited about... National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day (Feb 7), My mommy birthday, my birthday, Thanksgiving, Christmas and today.... Numerous commemorations take place on this day across the nation and world.  My day was no different from many others especially within the HIV Prevention arena... Woke up went to work, started a report (that I didn't finish) yet the most important part of the day was provide 25 people the most valuable information of the day, and that was their HIV-status... From testing I attended a movie screening of The Epidemic Chronicles, taken from the author Facebook page:

I just dont know where to begin... (first let me warn you this is 100% fun post)...

April 13 (10:03am) uthresourced leaves his office to grab breakfast from subway
               (10:04am) walks out off and say hi to a few folk, as he turns up his iPod to drown out the noise of the street... Walking adjacent to KFC he precieves a pink bucket in the window... and see an oh but famous name in the upper left hand corner... "Susan G. Komen Search for a Cure".... 
                (10:07am)  uthresource stands infront of KFC as he ponders... WOW SUSN G. is a business genius... Put a couple of peieces of chicken in the pink box and charge a couple of more dollas and watch the awareness and full bellies roll in...
               (10:20am) after consuming breakfast from Subway, uthresouced calls a couple of ppl nationwide and have a frank discussion about the advirtisment folks at Komen are a genius... she has planes, m&m's, shoelaces, iPods(my mom has one), shoes, honda civics, BMW 330i, Condi Rice and so many other things...

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The campaign is called "Buckets for Cures", KFC will donate 50cents per bucker purcased by the restaruant operators with a minimum donation of 1million dollars. Participants can find their pink buckets between April 5 - May 9, 2010.

Long story short... I think the ppl at Susan G. Komen should box up their best practices and sale it to other folks and allow everyone to benieft!

This past weekend, the Office of National AIDS Policy (ONAP) released Community Ideas for Improving the Response to the Domestic HIV Epidemic: A Report on a National Dialogue on HIV/AIDS. The “Report” serves as an over arching results from the 14 community discussion ONAP organized nationwide in efforts to draft the National HIV/AIDS Strategy (NHAS). The NHAS will be the first MAJOR document by the United States addressing HIV/AIDS and the large problem here at home. NHAS will be broken into three parts:

(1) Preventing new HIV infection
(2) Increase access to care and optimize health outcomes
(3) Reduce HIV-related health disparities

The Report allows the public (at large) to see the most crosscutting, and most mentioned (and even some less mentioned) conversations during this data collection period. Throughout the “Report”, ONAP reminds that NHAS is not “…intended to be a comprehensive list of all the action, policies, and programmatic priories needed to respond to the domestic HIV epidemic.”

More...

Yesterday mark a historical setting in the history of Black Gay/Queer Men History... Raynard S. Kington, M.D., Ph.D., M.B.A.,  was ushered in as the 13th  President of Grinnell College, a small 164 year old institution located in Iowa. 

Dr. Kington resumes speaks VOLUMES by itself. During the acceptance of the the new role of the college president, he states, "I feel compelled to acknowledge as the great-grandson of slaves at this institution whose founders were active participants in the abolitionist movement." During his brief speech he introduced the college to his partner Dr. Peter T. Daniolos and their two toddler children. 

Just from a personal standpoint this is amazing! 

You can find the whole article as well as Dr. Kington speech here. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did... Watch for his son lol. 

A good friend of mine sent me this article thinking I would enjoy reading it, and being the nerd I am… I did surprisingly.

The article focused on the interesting intersections of LGBT People of Color Need More than Health Insurance, I guess being a LGBT person of color this makes perfect sense to me however the more educated folks of the county.

To make a long story short, the Center for American Progress conducted research around LGBT persons of color and health insurance and concluded a few things. First LGBT persons of color face “starkly different needs from the rest of the population,” in addition to “racial/ethnic minorities that are LGBT face some of the greatest health care challenges.” (GO FIGURE…)

Other findings included:

- Disparities around treatments and initial medical diagnosis
- Data around different diseases
- Extreme concerns around the mental health of LGBT people of color
- Even less and more anecdotal data around the transgender population

How can we begin to change this….Change begins with EDUCATION specifically around the needs of the LGBT persons. Showing the population that they matter, could be a great starting point, this can come by adding more questions on the numerous national health surveys concerning sexual orientation or gender identities. As education continues, disparities will be reduced between LGBT people of color and the American population.

Great article, overall and it will leave you wondering where do we go from here? Thank you friend!

President Obama along with The Office of National AIDS Policy (ONAP) last week brought close to 40 youth from across the country for a conversation/meeting around rising HIV/AIDS rates and how it relates to the youth of America.

ONAP has been charged to develop the National HIV/AIDS Strategy (NHAS), in response to the rising rates of HIV/AIDS which the Center for Disease Control and Prevention speaks on often. The NHAS will address three topics of (1) reducing the numbers of new people infected (incidence), (2) increasing the number of people linked to care and, (3) reducing HIV-related health disparities as it relates to HIV infection.

After the Director of ONAP, Jeffrey Crowley and others from his office greeted us we were divided on the three lines in accordance to the three goals of the National HIV/AIDS Strategy. I was fortunate to contribute on the lines of Population-specific Challenges that Contributes to Disparities in Delivery of Care.

Many of our recommendations center on ending/reducing stigma and discrimination,  increasing cultural competency around awareness of HIV/AIDS and bring more medical options to the communities most affected by HIV/AIDS. It was aspiring to hear so many testimonies from those affected and living with HIV/AIDS and seeing them continue to go forward in life.

Since the meeting our recommendations have been drafted into a working document and we will submit our report to ONAP this TUESDAY! I definitely think the Nation HIV/AIDS Strategy is much needed and it will do what it is set out to do.

In the mean time, I will be here to report any updates! Until next time….

Back in August, the White House announced over the next few months, the Office of National AIDS Policy (ONAP) would be created with in effort to draft the National HIV/AIDS Strategy (NHAS). The Strategy would cover three topics, (1) reducing the number of HIV infection, (2) increase access to care/treatment options for those persons living with HIV/AIDS, and (3) decrease health disparities related to HIV/AIDS. ONAP proceded with organizing 14 HIV/AIDS Forums to be held across the country collecting reccomendations on how this task can be accomplished. The first official White House ONAP Forum was held at the 2009 Center for Disease Control and Prevention National HIV Prevention Confernce (NHPC) in Atlanta, GA.

October 26, 2009, the ONAP Train rolled around to Columbia, SC. From attending the first forum, I was siked to attend the forum that would be in my own back yard. At the completion of the night, I was very happy that I attended. I felt like the State of South Carolina, and a few neighbors from North Carolina, made their voices heard. 

The audience included Persons Living with HIV/AIDS, parents, siblings, Executive Directors of AIDS Service Organizations, and others who have the interest and the knowledge that the TIME IS NOW TO CORRECT THIS PROBLEM WITH HIV/AIDS! So I fought most of the night with myself, if I would stand and add something to the reccomendation list, and finally before the completion of the night, I did stand to the microphone...(Being a very shy person...lol) I reccomended more opprutunites for Community Based Organizations being able to develope and implement programs targeted at reducing stigma and discrimination towards the increasing numbers amongst Young Black Gay Men (YBGM).

For the readers, check out ONAP HIV Forum Schedule and if you are in the general vacinity try to make it, and allow your voice to be heard. If a meeting is not coming to your neck of the woods, dont worry you can still voice your opinion, by visiting  ONAP Call To Action and leaving your reccomendations.

For more information concerning anything you have read, please do not hesitate to email or just respond to this... 

Thank you all, and have a wonderful rest of your day.
<signing off>

hey everyone,

Since January 2009, I became a part of this year long leadership trainning through the National AIDS Education & Services for Minorities, Inc., headquarted in Atlanta, Ga. The CRIBBS (Creating Intelligent Black Brothers Seminar) Fellowship, prepares young Black gay men, to be Community and Organizational leaders around HIV/AIDS in our community. During the year, we have completed assignments around leadership, our interpretations of where problems exist in the plight against HIV/AIDS, in addition to designing a community assesment project from scratch and being able to present it at the 2010 National African American MSM Leadership Conference on HIV/AIDS and Other Health Disparities.

One of our recent assignments consisted of building our Leadership Legacy . Quickly, a legacy is defined as, "anything handed down from the past, as from an ancestor or predecessor." For the assignment at hand,  our Leadership Legacy is how we would like to be remember as it relates to the work we do in and around HIV/AIDS. I'm generally not challenged by many assignments, so after reading Your Leadership Legacy by Robert Galford and Regina Maruca(2006), I started to write what I wanted to be remembered by and I was at a standstill...  So why the standstill you asked? I answer being that I am beginning to see the importance of why we all are here... Working in the field that we work is EXTREMELY HARD on the easiest day, and on days, when we might have to tell someone news of them being HIV positive only makes it more difficult, and unpredictable. As I sat, around the table with my brothers (Jamaal, Cardel, Jermaine, Tarius)  and listened to what they will (speaking it into existence) be remember for, my Leadership Legacy began taking place.

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