On September 20, I attended a Congressional Briefing in Washington, D.C at the U.S. Capitol Visitor’s Center. The briefing was in preparation for National Latino AIDS Awareness Day and was hosted by two groups: the Latino Commission on AIDS (represented by Guillermo Chacon and Melissa Faith Ramirez) and the National Latino AIDS Action Network (represented by Francisco Ruiz). The focus of the briefing was “HIV/AIDS and Latinos/Hispanics: Identifying and Addressing the Needs of a Growing Community in a Changing Landscape”.

Several U.S. Senators were invited to provide remarks: Senator Gillibrand (D/NY), Senator Rubio (R/FL), Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-18/FL), and Congresswoman Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-34/CA). Other guests from six separate organizations and establishments also spoke, giving brief presentations.

From the U.S. Health and Human Services, Department of HIV Services, Dr. Timothy Harrison spoke about the National HIV/AIDS Strategy and how there needs to be better coordination efforts at the local level. He emphasized the need for programs targeting women who are positive and mentioned that the Health and Human Services is looking to evaluate and support programs who’s services target this population (women who are HIV positive).

Dr. Joseph Prejean, from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, shared with us some of the CDC’s recently released HIV/AIDS data. Reinforcing the impact of the HIV/AIDS epidemic on the Latino/Hispanic population was the fact that Hispanics only represent 13% of the population (in 40 states studied) but accounted for 19% of those infected. Furthermore, the age distribution of infection varies depending on the population. New infection rates for Hispanics are much younger, between the ages of 13 and 29, compared to Whites who are older when newly infected (40+). Dr. Prejean also noted that the goal is not to stabilize rates of new infection, but it is to reduce the rate of infection. There was also mention of looking at differences between foreign-born and U.S. born Latinos/Hispanics.

Teresa Chapa, the Senior Policy Advisor for Behavioral Health in the Office of Minority Health, spoke on behalf of Dr. Garth N. Graham and Jay Blackstone (Office of Minority Health). She mainly spoke about “collaborative care” and the formation of a delivery system that addresses the needs of our communities. Similar to the idea that interventions should have a “bottom-up” path, a grassroots approach so that they

specifically address/take care of those issues most dear to the community being helped.

Roxana Olivas, from the Executive Office of the Mayor of Washington, D.C., continued the conversation by speaking about linguistically and culturally appropriate programs. It is great that individuals in the nation’s capitol are speaking about a type of program that Transdiaspora Network is already working with.

Catalina Sol is the Chief Program Officer at La Clínica del Pueblo, a health center in the area that has been serving the Latino community in D.C. As a federally qualified health center (since 2007), La Clínica del Pueblo receives funding to help with the provision of services and direct care to patients. Ms. Catalina Sol mentioned that the Office of Minority Health is sponsoring community-based organizations (i.e. PPFA, Andromeda, La Clínica del Pueblo) who are providing valuable services to their surrounding communities. There was also mention that testing without prevention is not sufficient! That organizations and health centers are doing a good thing by promoting testing and helping individuals access testing, but that more needs to be done: that prevention education and access to prevention (safe sex and clean needles) is also needed in order to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS and reduce the rate of new infections.

Lastly, a young man by the name of Jose Ramirez gave his perspective of a Latino living with HIV. Diagnosed when he was 17 years old, he has become an advocate and speaker for Latino rights and educating youth about the importance of protection, prevention and being screened for HIV/AIDS. His story can be heard in the documentary “The Other City” (trailer). He emphasized that yes, it is great that we are talking to the youth about this disease/epidemic, but that we also need to talk to the families and schools.