PHR Student Program South Regional Hub

The PHR chapter at Northeastern Ohio Universities Colleges of Medicine and Pharmacy (NEOUCOM) had a banner World AIDS Day celebration. Writes NEOUCOMS’s Julia Ng:

Students from NEOUCOM’s PHR chapter held an AIDS Week of Awareness surrounding World AIDS Day. Daily speakers and activities covered a wide range of topics from harm reduction and access to anti-retroviral medications to the feminization of AIDS. As a visual representation of this week, the student body received red ribbons and many students participated in creating Peace Tiles. These tiles were a depiction of students’ emotions regarding HIV/AIDS and what should be done to help fight this epidemic. As a first year chapter at NEOUCOM, the members were extremely excited by the interest from the student body and faculty and look forward to implementing what they’ve learned at local Syringe Exchange Programs and HIV/AIDS support agencies.

Check out these photos from NEOCOM’s WAD events.

Got great photos from your chapter’s WAD events? Email me at skalloch[at]phrusa[dot]org and we’ll post them here!

World AIDS Day (WAD) is a uniquely dynamic time of year where people from throughout your community are willing to come together and discuss the global AIDS crisis. We highly encourage your student chapters to take advantage and invite your colleagues to join you in recognizing World AIDS Day! Here are some resource recommendations to help as you consider event options, including, film recommendations, journal club articles, and tips for finding speakers.

Film Recommendations

A film screening can be an easy and effective way to get people involved and fill them in on the most pressing issues. Numerous powerful films have been made about the global AIDS crisis and themes such as human rights, women’s rights, and universal access. Here are a few suggestions of relatively recent and well received films:

• Coming to Say Goodbye: Stories of AIDS in Africa – This short (27 minute) feature weaves together the stories of several families dealing with AIDS in Tanzania and Kenya.
• Yesterday – Oscar nominated film about an HIV-positive mother in South Africa struggling to stay alive long enough to see her daughter off to school.
• A Closer Walk - Narrated by Will Smith and Glenn Close and featuring Kofi Annan, the Dalai Lama and Bono this expansive film about the global AIDS crisis travels between Africa, North America, Europe and South Asia as it explores the challenges and heartbreaks of AIDS.
• A Powerful Noise – A documentary about three women in different parts of the world (one of whom is an HIV-positive advocate for PWAs in Vietnam) overcoming gender barriers and poverty to affect positive changes in their respective communities.
• SASA – A 33 minute award-winning film that provides a glimpse into the lives of two East African women where intimate partner violence has made them susceptible to HIV. (The film is saved as a .mov file and thus needs to be played using QuickTime or a compatible player.)

Organize a Journal Club

A smaller event idea for interested members of your organization can be a discussion group to discuss relevant articles and brainstorm ideas. Consider using WAD as the inspiration for a journal club on health and human rights, global AIDS, or other related issues! Here are three good articles to use as a springboard to further discussion and reading:

1. Confronting AIDS: Human Rights, Law and Social Transformation; Mark Heywood and Dennis Altman; Health and Human Rights, Volume 5, No. 1 (2000), Pages 149-179
2. All for Universal Health Coverage; Laurie Garrett, A Mushtaque R Chowdhury and Ariel Pablos-Mendez; The Lancet, Volume 374, No. 9697, Pages 1294-1299
3. Human Rights Approaches to an Expanded Response to Address Women’s Vulnerability to HIV/AIDS; Daniel Whelan; Health and Human Rights, Volume 3, No. 1 (1998), Pages 20-36.

Additional Health and Human Rights-related articles and Right to Health-related books and journals are available on our website.

Host a Presenter

Having a guest come speak is always a fantastic idea for an event. Check out our Host a Speaker Guide and read some tips for finding and inviting a speaker:

• Ask your professors! Faculty members tend to know many people in the field and often have insight into who in the area might be most likely to be able to attend your event. They can also lend their support by helping present the invitation and acting asde facto sponsors of your event.
• Do some investigation to find non-university activists or organizations from the local community.
• Take advantage of the internet. You may be pleasantly surprised and realize they are at a nearby institution or in the same city.
• Reach out to other student groups to co-host an event. Not only does this make publicity more effective, it also means you can pool funds to invite someone from further away than would otherwise be possible.

PHR will join the globe in celebrating World AIDS Day (WAD) on December 1, 2009. This year’s WAD theme is Universal Access and Human Rights. The critical message: access for all to HIV/AIDS prevention, treatment, and care is a fundamental human right we all must fight to protect.

Given this year’s theme, PHR and other partnering organizations will bridge World AIDS Day (Dec 1) with Human Rights Day (Dec 10) with a 10,000 signatures in 10 days campaign, mobilizing American’s to advocate for U.S. ratification of the Convention to Eliminate All forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) in 2010.

What does CEDAW do for women’s right?
CEDAW creates a legal, universal definition of women’s rights and discrimination against women. It includes: direction for ratified countries to ensure national laws respect the universal standards, monitoring processes for women’s rights standards worldwide, and forums for handling grievances and holding governments accountable. Learn more about CEDAW.

If the US wants to play a credible and influential leadership role on health, human rights and women’s empowerment—As president Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have promised—it must ratify the most prominent international law for women.

Why push for CEDAW on World AIDS Day?
Women and young girls presently comprise more than 60% of those who are living with HIV in sub-Saharan Africa, and the numbers continue to grow. Any solution to the epidemic must acknowledge the devastating gender dynamics of AIDS and place women’s empowerment at the center of the solution. To halt the feminization of AIDS, we must address the root causes of HIV/AIDS transmission, many of which are based on human rights violations such as widespread gender-based violence, stigma and discrimination, and inequalities and violations of economic, social, legal, health and educational rights.

The most vexing and intolerable dimension of the pandemic is what is happening to women. Gender inequality is driving the pandemic, and we will never subdue the gruesome force of AIDS until the rights of women become paramount in the struggle.
-Stephen Lewis, Keynote Speech at International AIDS Conference, Toronto

Join us!
Mark your calendars for Dec 1-Dec 10 to:

• mobilize your campus to participate in this national action by urging your Senators to support U.S. ratification of CEDAW and helping PHR collect 10,000 signatures
• educate your community about the feminization of AIDS and its direct connection to women’s rights standards.

Throughout the next few weeks, we will launch a series of educational and organizing resources to help you plan your national WAD action. In the meantime, please feel free to contact me with any questions and requests for further information.