Legislative Priorities on HIV

HIV affects thousands of Minnesotans. For those infected, HIV affects relationships and health care, and can affect employment, finances, and housing, among many other aspects of life. For those affected, it touches our family, friends,  and coworkers. For those at risk, it can have a profound effect on the psyche, and on how we live our lives. For those who have been paying attention to the global epidemic, HIV touches our hearts and minds, as we watch millions suffer from the disease and the fallout that a high death rate has on developing nations. HIV touches more than the 5,322 people who have been diagnosed in Minnesota.

The makeup of national and local government in light of November’s election has the potential to effect AIDS policy. A leader in HIV prevention and care in Minnesota suggests a strategic approach to shifting the policy toward HIV in Minnesota, relying on lessons learned from the the progressive victory of 14 years ago: Clinton and Gore in 1992.

The new administration called an emergency meeting of people in the HIV community to figure out how to address a growing epidemic that had been met with lackluster attention by the Reagan and Bush administrations. The community demanded action on a list of over one hundred policy points, a list that was ambitious but not realistic. To their credit, however, in the early 1990s, treatment options were bleak and many people were dying. The sense of urgency was high.

Lorraine Teel, executive director of the Minnesota AIDS Project was at that meeting, and remembering the frustration of many competing voices, is now urging for strategic policymaking.

“Yes, there is a shift in power in Minnesota and in Washington, but we can’t come in with a 20 page laundry list and say ‘Here are our demands!’ …We need to be strategic and call for and demand basic, honest HIV information. One thing that still holds us back is the stigma of HIV.”

Teel says people still don’t understand the basics of HIV, and that is something that needs to change.

In fact, the last 6 years has seen an insurgance of abstinence-only sex education, an education option that has been met with mixed results at best, and failed to provide life saving health information at the worst. Studies in Texas, Minnesota, and nationwide have been critical of the approach.

Even more disturbing is that federally funded abstinence-only until marriage programs paradoxically exclude a high-risk population without the option of marriage: gay men.

Teel and the Minnesota AIDS Project may be working with a friendlier government in the near future, but until the average Minnesotan understands HIV and the impact it has locally, nationally, and worldwide, little change is possible.