Cross Post: How My Daughter Became an HIV/AIDS Activist…
The following is an excerpt from a blog post by Donna Crews, originally posted on March 10, 2010 (National Women and Girls HIV/AIDS Awareness Day) at the Human Rights Campaign’s blog, “HRC Back Story“. Crews is the Director of Government Affairs at AIDS Action Council, a national HIV/AIDS advocacy organization led by AIDS Action Committee’s President & CEO, Rebecca Haag.
My 17 year old daughter became an AIDS activist yesterday! As we enter the third decade of HIV and AIDS I realize my daughter – born in 1992 – has grown up with HIV and AIDS all of her life. I took her to the National Women and Girls HIV/AIDS Awareness Day Congressional Briefing sponsored by National Association of State AIDS Directors (NASTAD) and the Office of Women’s Health. This was not her first HIV event, she has attended HIV events with me previously, but something said yesterday caught her attention. It might have been the statistic that HIV is the leading cause of death for African American women ages 25-34 that Health and Human Services Assistant Secretary, Dr. Howard Koh referenced. Janet Cleveland, Deputy Director of Prevention Programs, Division of HIV/AIDS Prevention at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) showed the fact in graph format that resonated with her. Or it may have been the statistic that Tina Tchen, Executive Director of the White House Council on Women and Girls stated that according to CDC data from 2005, 26% of people living with AIDS in the United States are women.
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