December 21, 2007
FINALLY, SOME PREVENTION JUSTICE
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The road to accurate HIV/AIDS prevention starts here |
Could 2008 be the year the U.S. gets serious about comprehensive sex education and science-based HIV prevention? Not to get carried away, but going into the New Year, advocates have a few good reasons to be optimistic. In the space of a single week, Congress took some sane steps on domestic HIV prevention policies while D.C. schools began getting their comprehensive sex-ed act together. Unfortunately, PEPFAR funding still has to ride the abstinence-only bus.
School is (now) cool
After a short two years of deliberation, the Washington, D.C., Board of Education approved new standards for health education that include clear age-appropriate grade-by-grade guidelines for comprehensive sex education, including lessons on HIV/AIDS and contraception.
The adoption of the guidelines came only days after the Appleseed Center's "Report Card" that handed D.C. a "D" for the lack of a coordinated HIV/AIDS education program in the D.C. public schools.
The Sexuality, Reproduction & Health units—just one element of a larger health plan that also aims to curb D.C.'s obesity epidemic— start in third grade where students learn to "describe how individual bodies are different sizes, shapes, and colors, but are equally special, including those that are disabled."
Fifth graders are asked to "define STIs and HIV/AIDS; describe behaviors that place one at risk for HIV/AIDS, STIs, or unintended pregnancy; and explain why abstinence is the most effective way to prevent disease or pregnancy." In seventh grade, students must "describe short-term and long-term consequences of adolescent sexual activity, and the benefits of abstinence as the most effective means of contraception."
By eighth grade, D.C. kids will learn to "explain the relationship between injected drug use and diseases such as HIV/AIDS and hepatitis," "explain the importance of testing both partners for HIV and STIs before sexual behavior and the risks and precautions of birth delivery when HIV and STIs are present" and "Describe why abstinence and contraception are important." While the guidelines aren't perfect— for example, teaching how to use contraception such as condoms are not specifically mentioned as part of the curriculum. But advocates feel confident that this will lay the groundwork for a truly be a comprehensive sex education curriculum.
"We're ecstatic that for the first time in D.C.'s history there's a clear plan for each and every student to get consistent and high quality health information," said Adam Tenner, executive director of Metro TeenAIDS, a D.C.-based organization that has been working for four years to get a comprehensive-sex ed curriculum into all of the schools. "Now Metro TeenAIDS will be watching to make sure that the D.C. schools properly implement the guidelines. While the hard part will be getting the schools to implement the guidelines, this is a much-needed step to curbing D.C.'s HIV epidemic."D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty has named HIV/AIDS D.C.'s No. 1 public health problem. Despite the poor grade from Appleseed on HIV education for school kids D.C.'s earned an "A" in the area of HIV surveillance.
Beginning of the end of ab-only funding?
Congress partially took the Update's advice, and cut a $28 million increase in the Community-Based Abstinence Education Program. While there is still way too much in funding for sex-ed programs that teach abstinence-until-marriage only, more states are starting to reject the money. This week, New Mexico became the fifteenth state to do so.
Tenner finds that heartening. "We're in a new age, especially in our urban communities so hard hit by HIV/AIDS," Tenner said. "The moral argument will change and people will no longer find it amoral to teach people how to protect themselves but will rather find it amoral to withhold information."
In more harm reduction hotness, the budget lifts the federal ban on D.C. spending its own funds to distribute clean needles, a prevention approach that has significantly slowed the spread of HIV among injecting drug users.
In other Congressional budget news...
The news wasn't so positive when it came to new President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) funding and the notorious requirement that one-third of PEPFAR prevention funds go to abstinence-only HIV prevention. The 2008 budget approved by both houses of Congress this week gives $5 billion for global AIDS programs—one billion less than AIDS advocates requested, and PEPFAR received $600 million less than advocates requested. Despite this shortfall, PEPFAR includes funding for good, targeted programming, such as $115 million to spend on tuberculosis programs. "Even though it's a billion short, we've won some important changes," said David Bryden, of the Global AIDS Alliance.
But Bush is expected to use his line-item veto to eliminate language in the budget that would relax PEPFAR's abstinence education strings. "The Bush administration feels the program's going just fine," Bryden said.It was a mixed bag for home-front funding, with tiny Ryan White CARE Act increases (Part A and ADAP) cut when the Senate-forced Iraq war funding imposes across-the-board domestic cuts, and a cut in Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) funding. Bah humbug. To read a wrap-up of AIDS advocates reactions, click here for coverage in the Gay City News.