CHAANGE Marches On!

CHAANGE Marches On!
by
Gary Dennis

There is no longer HIV testing on college campuses so what do we do was the question of the day at the February CHAANGE Maker meeting. Community Advocates as well as County staff pondered this issue; which was brought to CHAANGE’s attention while participating at a Volunteer Faire at Fresno City College. To our surprise, HIV testing has stopped on Fresno campuses due to a lack of funding for HIV testing from the State. The State basically told the County that they only want them testing where they would get a high rate of positives such as the gay bars since they weren’t getting many positives on the college campuses. The County does have control on the local level however as to where they do want to invest their (ours) testing monies. That’s why you’ll find the mobile unit at Déjà vu and the parole office, places where they believe they will find a lot of positives. But my concern about all of that is the fact that it still gives off the message that HIV is still a queer/junky disease. I felt that with HIV testing being done on campus, it was opening up the doors for others who are not gay or on parole to get tested; especially with the increase in HIV numbers in Black and Latino heterosexual females. But the good news is that the County has expanded their testing times at the County office downtown to make up for those days that are no longer being available on campus. One Fresno City College student had made the suggestion of having the nurses on campus do the testing but the County representatives said that it would take them two days to train these folks and they probably won’t have time to do so. I said you won’t know until you ask. So CHAANGE will be contacting Fresno City College to see would their on campus nurses be willing to undergo the necessary training it would take to have HIV testing back on campus.

Interesting enough, another issue sprained up in the heat of this discussion which has to do with the type of testing serves being offered by the County. As it has been, there were two types of test used: one was Confidential and the other was Anonymous. Anonymous testing is where they don’t get your personal information but give you a unique identifier such a number code that you would use to get your test results. The other is Confidential where they would get personal information and use that to get you your results. In the past Confidential info was placed into your medical records and caused an increase in people’s medical insurance premiums and also the possibility of this information getting into the wrong hands. Well the thing is the Federal government wants Anonymous testing done away with since it doesn’t go with their name based systems in other states and it is easier to track positives with their name based system. The County has assured the Community Advocates that individual’s statuses are protected because of HIPPA laws which protect patients’ information from being revealed to unnecessary people without the proper paper work. That’s why you have to sign extra papers when you go to the doctor to have your insurance pay for you visits and such. Now the issue I have with that is the tracking of the people and the concerns that people have in general about giving away their personal info to the government. As it was mentioned by the County staff present at this meeting, it is helpful for them to have personal info just in case someone who is positive doesn’t come back and pick up their results; they can track this person down and try to get this person into care. County staff has mentioned that it is not that important to get the real name just as long as the person is getting tested which is what matters most in their eyes.

One more thing to keep your eyes on is the fact that California will be the first state to have a statewide Initiative addressing the issue of HIV in the African American community. In the twenty something years that HIV has been around, California will be the first state to formulate legislation around this issue to address the ever important question of why isn’t there enough money to address HIV in the African American community since their numbers are the highest of all the ethnic groups in the state?!! I’m a member of the State Advisory Board on African Americans and HIV and I can tell you from an advocacy perspective, this need to happen. The Minority AIDS Initiative (MAI) only receives 5% of the total federal discretionary HIV/AIDS funding for FY2005. The MAI is the funding source that is directed toward HIV prevention in minority communities such as Black and Latinos. With these groups representing 13% of the total US population for each of their categories but have the highest in HIV cases; why isn’t the money being spent in that manner where the science drives the money. Instead, they want these groups of people to fight over crumbs to deal with an ever spreading wild fire. (See the Kaiser Family Foundation Minority AIDS Initiative “Policy Brief” for more info.) That is why it is so important to get involved with CHAANGE and educate and empower yourselves on these issues so that you won’t be fighting over crumbs!

With that being said, our next CHAANGE Makers meeting is March 2nd from 2pm to 4pm here at the office on 1584 N. Van Ness Ave.(S.E. corner of Van Ness & McKinley). You can call (559) 268-1969 with questions, suggestions, or if you want to help out. See you then!