Advocates across the country celebrated a historic victory last week when Obama’s Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS (PACHA) passed a resolution on women and HIV! Among other provisions, the resolution recommends that the U.S. National HIV/AIDS Strategy Implementation Plan be updated to [...]
HIV Volunteerism: In Our House by Barb Cardell “What do you do?” It is a common question that I dread. “I am a PROFESSIONAL volunteer,” I usually respond with a cheery smile plastered on my face. What am I supposed [...]
Can I Reach for the American Dream? by Sonia Rastogi April 17th, 2012 was Tax Day as well as Equal Pay Day (read Teresa Sullivan’s Wage Gap blog), a day established to bring attention to the pay gap for women [...]
HIV Volunteerism: In Our House by Barb Cardell “What do you do?” It is a common question that I dread. “I am a PROFESSIONAL volunteer,” I usually respond with a cheery smile plastered on my face. What am I supposed [...]
Can I Reach for the American Dream? by Sonia Rastogi April 17th, 2012 was Tax Day as well as Equal Pay Day (read Teresa Sullivan’s Wage Gap blog), a day established to bring attention to the pay gap for women [...]
PUSHING THE GLASS CEILING: Life, Liberty and Justice for HIV+ Women by Nicole Seguin “Like slavery and apartheid, poverty is not natural. It is man-made and it can be overcome and eradicated by the actions of human beings.” - Nelson [...]
PUSHING THE GLASS CEILING: Life, Liberty and Justice for HIV+ Women by Nicole Seguin “Like slavery and apartheid, poverty is not natural. It is man-made and it can be overcome and eradicated by the actions of human beings.” - Nelson [...]
by Teresa Sullivan, Philadelphia, PA “The moment we begin to fear the opinions of others and hesitate to tell the truth that is in us, and from motives of policy are silent when we should speak, the divine floods of [...]
By Phillis Fears, Gulfport, MS Mississippi is the state that was slow to catch on to integration and interracial relationships. Mississippi is also behind economically and in access to health care. If more women living with HIV become leaders, then [...]
by Naina Khanna I still feel sick thinking about the Blunt amendment. Not two weeks ago, a bill that would have exempted employers from having to pay for birth control failed to pass the male-dominated Senate (83 men to 17 women) [...]
Count Me In Poetry By Stacy Jennings From March 6-8, PWN hosted an Advocacy Summit for 50 women from the Southern U.S. Stacy Jennings, a participant from South Carolina spoke up and spoke out! Count Me In Count me in [...]
Sexual Rights of HIV+ Transwomen by Dee Borrego I’m puzzled by the question of what the sexual rights of HIV+ transgender women are. To me, as an openly HIV+ transwoman, the answer is as clear as glass. Simply put, [...]
What’s the Link between Intimate Partner Violence and HIV? by Kat Griffith I am extremely honored to be asked to sit on a national committee that created a curriculum for teaching providers about the intersection between Intimate Partner Violence and [...]
Mujeres Unidas: Representing Latinas Living with HIV at AIDS 2012 by Martha Zarate My name is Martha Zarate. After 12 consecutive years of trying to have a baby, God gave me the miracle of motherhood in 2000. But through the [...]
Transphobia on Philadelphia’s public buses and trains: A Colourful Conversation with Andrea Lamour-Harrington By Andrea Lamour-Harrington I live in the fair city of Philadelphia, PA – “the city of brotherly love and sisterly affection.” Now let me elaborate on just [...]
By Acintia Wright In the U.S., it was recently reported that about 50% of women living with HIV are not receiving medical care. In San Diego County, the statistic is higher — 69% of women living with HIV are not [...]
By Gina Brown My name is Gina Brown and I am a woman living with HIV. I was diagnosed 17 years ago while pregnant with my daughter. I can still remember hearing the words, “you have AIDS and you’re [...]
By Barb Cardell, PWN-USA Member in Colorado “Given… trends and issues, efforts to stem the tide of the U.S. HIV/AIDS epidemic will increasingly depend on how and to what extent its effect on women and girls is addressed” – [...]
by Maria Cruz, PWN-USA Philadelphia I am a HIV positive recovering addict, and live a wonderful life. However, the wonderful life I live now wasn’t always so bright. It was during my incarceration that I first learned that I was [...]
by Sonia Rastogi In mid-May of 2011, “a brutal rape and sexual assault was not enough. Now the New York Post has turned its vicious sights on the woman who brought assault charges against International Monetary Fund leader Dominique Strauss-Kahn. [...]
By Brook Kelly Deon Haywood, Executive Director of Women with a Vision (WWAV) in New Orleans, LA, hosted PWN’s Human Rights Training in June 2011. PWN’s Brook Kelly interviewed Deon after the training. What is Women with a Vision’s (WWAV) [...]
Spotlight on the South: “I am not the enemy, I am the answer” – an interview with Bonetta Graves and Juanita Williams By Sonia Rastogi and Naina Khanna The epidemic in the Southern United States is “skyrocketing. Every week we [...]
By Sonia Rastogi A ray of hope in the war on women came on August 1, 2011, when the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) officially adopted the Institute of Medicine’s (IOM) guidelines recommending that HIV testing and contraception options [...]
By Naina Khanna – Community Organizing is a long-term approach to achieving social change through collective action by changing the balance of power. In the process, the people most affected by an issue are supported to identify a problem and [...]
Women Commend President Obama’s Leadership on National HIV/AIDS Strategy; Urge Increased Focus on Women; Southern U.S. and “Shadow Cities” in Implementation Wednesday July 13, Oakland CA – One year after the release of the U.S. National HIV/AIDS Strategy, HIV-positive women [...]
By Sonia Rastogi – The AIDS Drug Assistance Program (ADAP), is a safety net that provides life-saving medications to people living with HIV. Due to a funding crisis, as of September 2010, 3,441 people are on waiting lists to access [...]
By Teresa Sullivan When I went to jail in 2005, one of the biggest problems that I had was at the medication window. One day when going to get my HIV medications at the window, I looked at the pills [...]
Why Not Me? How I became an advocate for women on HIV and reproductive issues -by Michelle Anderson My name is Michelle Anderson and I live in Dallas, TX. Here is my story on how I transformed into an advocate [...]
By Sonia Rastogi – The U.S. will host the 20th International AIDS Conference (IAC) in Washington, DC in July 2012. The conference stayed out of the U.S for years, largely because of a community boycott due to the U.S. travel [...]
By Kat Griffith I have been privileged to be able to represent the Positive Women’s Network-USA on a national committee charged with creating a training curriculum to teach practitioners in the field about the intersection between Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) [...]
Reflecting on 30 years since the first case of HIV - by Acintia Wright In the last 30 years HIV has become a great milestone for myself and my family I became positive about 16 years ago on September 16, [...]
By Positive Women’s Network-USA – June 5th, 2011 will mark 30 years since the first case of what now is called HIV was recorded in U.S. history. Since then, people living with HIV, advocates, allies, friends, and families have spoken [...]
By Sonia Rastogi – cross-posted from The Well Project – April 2011′s ACT HIV American Conference for the Treatment of HIV, was a mind-expanding experience. Experts in medicine and research came together for 2 and one half days to discuss the treatment and [...]
By Barb Cardell – cross posted from The Well Project I recently attended the ACTHIV conference in Denver, thanks to a scholarship from The Well Project. ACTHIV is a nationwide conference for HIV treatment attended by providers, nurses, case managers, social [...]
By Kat Griffith Cross-posted from IL ASAP’s Anti-Stigma T-shirt Campaign Stigma is a three-dollar word that affects millions of Americans in different ways. Defining stigma as simply “a mark of shame or discredit” doesn’t sound very impactful, and yet communities around [...]
Excerpts from Women and HIV: A Nuanced Epidemic by Naina Khanna — The HIV epidemic among women in the U.S. largely affects women of color, low income women, and women with dependents. Over 80% of women living with HIV in the U.S. [...]
By Naina Khanna – There appears to be a disturbing trend taking place in cities and counties all over the country… the quiet de-funding of women-centered HIV services. This means HIV+ women have fewer places to go for peer support, support [...]
By Dee Borrego On World AIDS Day, the world remembers those of us living with HIV/AIDS, unlike the 364 other days of the year when our community becomes another sad statistic on the evening news about “other places.” As Americans, [...]
By Reverend Damon A. Powell, Ph.D. Recruitment and partnership with Black-American churches and sororities can serve as an aide in increasing HIV testing and awareness within Black-American communities. Although Black-American churches and sororities would appear to be strikingly different institutions [...]
It’s About Love: World AIDS Day 2010 by Naina Khanna This World AIDS Day, December 1st, 2010, I want to talk about love. Yes, love. We talk about sex frequently in the HIV world… but not so much about love. [...]
by Waheedah Shabazz-El The women’s Liberation movement of the 1960’s was undoubtedly a major contributor toward the achievement of women’s empowerment. As we feel our strength and recognize our worth as women we seize and create opportunities for ourselves and [...]