Canadian HIV Prevention Campaign; PLoS Medicine Essay on Treatment Access; Statehealthfacts.org Updates HIV/AIDS Funding Data
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Gay Men Play Safe HIV Prevention Campaign: AIDS Vancouver and partner organizations from across Canada worked with Rethink Advertising to launch the campaign, which urges men who have sex with men to continue to support HIV prevention activities, including condom use. The bilingual campaign -- which makes light of pet names for the male penis and uses the tagline, "Whatever you call it, thanks for keeping it safe" -- will appear on billboards, bus shelters and bathroom ads nationwide and includes an Internet/television commercial and the Web sites, GayMenPlaySafe.com and NousJouonsSafe.com. The campaign is the second and final campaign funded by an approximately $475,260 grant by the Public Health Agency of Canada aimed at sponsoring national HIV prevention campaigns for MSM (AIDS Vancouver release, 9/12).
- "Free Antiretrovirals Must Not Be Restricted Only to Treatment-Naive Patients," PLoS Medicine: Robert Colebunders and colleagues from the Infectious Diseases Institute at Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda, explain in this essay the rationale for providing antiretroviral treatment at no cost only to treatment-naive patients but argue that such a restriction is "highly problematic" in part because it raises human rights issues. The authors conclude that treatment programs in other countries should learn from the experiences of the Ugandan program (Colebunders et al., PLoS Medicine, October 2005).
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Statehealthfacts.org: Statehealthfacts.org -- the Kaiser Family Foundation's online source for state-by-state and national data on demographics, health and health policy -- has updated data for the Ryan White CARE Act and CDC, as well as added several new categories of data on fiscal year 2004 federal funding for HIV/AIDS. The new categories include data for the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, the Housing Opportunities for Persons with AIDS program and the Office of Minority Health. The data, which were collected in partnership with the National Alliance of State and Territorial AIDS Directors, are available by state and region (statehealthfacts.org, 9/13).
