U.S. Activists Raising Domestic AIDS Issues With Political Candidates

In the run-up to the November elections and the 2008 presidential campaign, US AIDS activists are hoping to persuade state and national political candidates to endorse policies that will help end global HIV/AIDS.

Launched by the Campaign to End AIDS (C2EA), the nonpartisan AIDSVote 2006 effort is calling for universal domestic and international access to AIDS treatment, care, and support by 2010. Candidates will be informed about policies that can help meet that end, and they will be asked to state their positions on related HIV/AIDS issues in a questionnaire that will form the basis for voter guides. Tactics will include petition drives and "bird-dogging" candidates, asking them about HIV/AIDS issues during public question periods.

New York-based Housing Works is providing central staffing for the national campaign. Housing Works' Youth Action Group and its Summer Enrichment Program, which serves the children of agency clients, have started a five-borough petition drive. The New York AIDS Coalition is helping in upstate efforts, including voter registration. Community meetings have been held in Syracuse and Albany with the support of the Capital District African-American Coalition on AIDS.

"We've got people working to raise the AIDS issue in gubernatorial and senatorial campaigns not just in Florida, but in Georgia, South Carolina, Mississippi, and North Carolina," said Michael Kink, Housing Works' advocacy director.

AIDSVote is petitioning candidates to support goals including:

• Expanding Medicaid for all HIV-positive people.
• Adequately funding AIDS Drug Assistance Programs, including provision for those with little or no insurance or those ineligible for Medicaid, and ending ADAP waiting lists.
• Ensuring ADAP and Ryan White-funded services include essential, non-medical, support services.
• Increasing science-based HIV prevention strategies and ending federal funding of abstinence—only AIDS education.
• Increasing outreach for at-risk groups including women, girls, men who have sex with men, injection drug users, prisoners, and sex workers.
• Providing housing for all homeless people with HIV/AIDS.
• Guaranteeing medical privacy of HIV/AIDS patients.

For more information, visit www.aidsvote.org.

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