About AIDS2008.com

AIDS2008.com is an independent community resource sponsored by Community HIV/AIDS Mobilization Project (CHAMP) for the 2008 International AIDS Conference. From July 21 through the end of the conference, AIDS2008.com will be a home for community bloggers and other journalists reporting from and about the plenaries, workshops, sessions, exhibits, and satellite/affiliated events at the XVII International AIDS Conference.

Dr. Uzodinma Adirieje

Dr. Uzodinma Adirieje is an Primary Health Care practitioner and HIV/AIDS advocate, researcher, writer, campaigner and activist. He is the Advocacy & Communications Manager and HIV/AIDS Advisor at Health Reform Foundation of Nigeria (HERFON). In Projects/Programmes management, Uzo was the Project Coordinator, ‘Study of Impact, Challenges and Long-Term Implications of Antiretroviral Therapy (ART) Programme in Nigeria [2007]’; Report writer/Documentation consultant, Nigeria HIV/AIDS Summit (2007); Programme Manager, ICASA 2005; Secretary, Nigeria National Health Conference 2006 and 2008 (www.ngnhc.org); Principal Investigator and UNAIDS/ILO/UNDP consultant on 'PPP and HIV/AIDS in Nigeria' (2004); Key Correspondent, Health and Development Networks (2002-present); Country Focal Point and member International Advisory Board of AIDS-Care-Watch Campaign (2006-present); Founder/Moderator, ICASA2005 Forum; and onsite reporter for Health and Development Networks (HDN) at the ICASA2003 in Nairobi. He is Columnist, Daily SUN newspaper (2004-2007) and Founder/moderator, icasa2005forum online (2004-present). His abstract was accepted and presented at ICASA2005, and three abstracts he co-authored were accepted for poster and CD-ROM for AIDS2008. He has received post-graduate trainings/courses in Managing Organisational Change for Strategic Transformation, Basic Health Economics, Leadership Skills Development, Health Care Financing and Health Insurance Systems, Projects Planning and Proposal Development, Monitoring and Evaluation/PPRHAA, Programmes Management, Evidence-based Health Writing, and Cyberwar, Netwar and the Revolution in Military Affairs - Real Threats and Virtual Myths. Currently studying for a Master of Public Health (MPH), Uzo’ had earlier graduated from Imo State University Okigwe and earned a Doctor of Optometry degree with focus on Public Health (1988), Federal School of Arts and Sciences Ondo (1982), Eziachi Secondary School, Orlu (1981) and Community School I, Amaruru (1976). He was Editor-in-chief, Orsu LGA Directory and who’s who; President General, Imo State Towns Development Association Lagos (2005-2008), President, ISTDA Cooperative Ltd, and governing council/life member, Nigeria-Britain Association. Uzo’ was Resource Centre Manager (2005-2007), HERFON; Programs Manager, 14th Int’l Conference on AIDS and STIs in Africa (ICASA 2005); Programs Director/Secretary General, Afrihealth Optonet Association (1995-present); Executive Director, Optonet International (1995-2005); Executive Coordinator, Afrihealth Information Projects (1995-2004), and Clinical Services Director, Adirivision Clinics Ltd (1990-2004). Uzodinma is a member of a handful of local and international professional bodies including Nigerian Institute of Management (NIM), Chartered Institute of Personnel Management of Nigeria [CIPMN], The Impact Alliance, American Diabetes Association, International AIDS Economics Network, etc. He has more than 40 (forty) articles/essays/publications to his credit, most of which are available on the Internet. He has received a handful of honours and awards including the chieftaincy title of Ahaejiejemba of Amaruru (2005), Presidential Recognition for Membership Growth from the President of Rotary International [worldwide] (1996), Distinguished Service Award from the Governor of Rotary International District 9110 (1994), Merit Award from Iganmu and Council of Chiefs Lagos State (1996), among others. Born in Amaruru on 25 February 1964, he is married to Edith Uzoadirieje, and blessed with three children. His hobbies include Social/Community Work, Public Speaking, Writing, Computing, Tennis, and Voluntary/International Services.

Emily Bass

Emily Bass is Program Director at AVAC, a small non-profit dedicated to global advocacy for HIV prevention. She’s been working as an HIV/AIDS activist, advocate and journalist for more than 10 years, and is currently completing a book about ARV roll-out that follows clinics and families throughout Uganda from 2004 to the present.

Latifa Boyce

As Communications Manager at the Alliance for Microbicide Development, Latifa Boyce administers Alliance communications, education, and outreach initiatives. Ms. Boyce holds a BS in Biology from Howard University, a MPH in Epidemiology and Biostatistics from George Washington University, and has received post-graduate training in Health Journalism from University of Minnesota. Prior to joining the Alliance, Ms. Boyce worked as public health researcher and communicator at a number of organizations, including National Institute of Mental Health, Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy, Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation, and National Minority AIDS Education and Training Center at Howard University. She has also written, produced, and hosted local health news and radio talk shows. Ms. Boyce interests include introducing new audiences to microbicide research, development, and advocacy. To contact Ms. Boyce, please email lboyce@microbicide.org.

Vanessa Brocato

Vanessa Brocato, JD, began working on HIV and AIDS as a Stop AIDS Chicago trained peer educator in high school, demonstrating condom use on vegetables. Like so many of us, she draws from and works with multiple movements, including global feminisms. Her legal training focused on international women's human rights, often focusing on HIV and AIDS and gender-based violence. Since then, she has worked extensively on advocating for sexuality education as a public health and human rights imperative. She has lived and worked in the midwestern United States, Ghana, and Washington, DC.

Vanessa currently serves as the Assistant Director for Prevention Policy at Gay Men's Health Crisis, the oldest AIDS service and advocacy organization in New York City. Through GMHC, she is able to work with people and communities infected and affected by the crisis to generate power and community-based solutions.

Kelly Castagnaro

Kelly joined the International Women’s Health Organization as Director of its Communications Program in 2007, leading the development and implementation of the organization’s communications strategy. Prior to joining IWHC, Kelly worked on communications and special events for both the non-profit and the public sectors for over ten years. She speaks Spanish and Italian.

Maxwell Ciardullo

Maxwell Ciardullo is a comprehensive sexuality education advocate and activist blogging with Team CHAMP during the 2008 IAC. He also works with SIECUS, the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States, as the Information Coordinator where he coordinates SIECUS' Community Advocacy Project and monitors controversies around the country related to sexuality education as well as providing assistance to local advocates. In addition, he is responsible for SIECUS' domestic opposition monitoring and research tracking. Maxwell also worked with the Campaign to End AIDS (C2EA) in the spring of 2005 to organize and coordinate the first Youth Action Institute. While in Washington, D.C. he volunteered at HIPS, a community organization that conducts HIV prevention outreach to sex workers in the DC area and currently works with the Door doing outreach to LGBTQ young people in Manhattan.

Matt Curtis

Matt Curtis is an advocate for the health and human rights of people who use illegal drugs. Since 2001, he has been a staff of the International Harm Reduction Development Program of the Open Society Institute in New York. His work there has focused most intensively on drug user community mobilization, promoting overdose prevention programs, and winning greater access to HIV- and drug treatment in Eastern Europe and Central Asia.

Julie Davids

Julie Davids is the founding Executive Director of Community HIV/AIDS Mobilization Project (CHAMP). She learned the ropes of hell-raising from the leaders of ACT UP Philadelphia in the first-wave HIV/AIDS direct action protest movement, and stuck around for the next 14 years. During that time, she worked on campaigns for needle exchange, health care access, and research issues, and served as a community advocate in the AIDS Clinical Trials Group (ACTG). At Philadelphia FIGHT, she helped to start Project TEACH (Treatment Education Activists Combating HIV), which provides activist and leadership training for people living with HIV.

She was the first community organizer for Health GAP, an activist group dedicated to eliminating barriers to access to HIV/AIDS treatment around the world. She founded CHAMP in 2003 after a year-long Charles H. Revson fellowship at Columbia University, where she developed an analysis of the history and future of HIV/AIDS as a social struggle tied to economic, racial and human rights.

She is the past co-chair of the Federal AIDS Policy Partnership (FAPP) and is on the steering committees of the Caucus for Evidence-Based Prevention and the International Rectal Microbicides Advocates. Currently, she is the board co-chair for the Providence Youth and Student Movement (PrYSM), a non-profit Southeast Asian youth-led organization whose vision is to end all forms of violence, whether they come from the self, the community, or from institutions and systems.

Emily Davila

Emily Davila is an organizer and writer who lives in New York City where she works for an NGO at the United Nations. She is a co-founder of the Global Youth Coalition on AIDS, and is studying for her degree in Strategic Communications at Columbia University.

Shalini Eddens

Shalini Eddens has been doing HIV/AIDS work for nearly ten years, beginning as a program coordinator for a women's early intervention program in Oakland. She is currently the Director of Education and Training at WORLD (Women Organized to Respond Threatening Diseases) where she coordinates the Lotus Project and several other education and training projects. Before coming to WORLD, I coordinated the women's program at Project Inform writing a quarterly newsletter, Wise Words. Shalini received a Masters in Public Health from Emory University in 2001. In her spare time she enjoys dance, yoga, music, and spending time with her family and friends.

Kenyon Farrow

Kenyon Farrow is the National Public Education Director for Queers for Economic Justice in New York City. Kenyon has been an organizer and media strategist around such issues as HIV/AIDS, prisons, policing, anti-queer violence, and racial and economic justice with the New York State Black Gay Network, FIERCE!, Katrina Information Network, Critical Resistance, and most recently as CHAMP's Director of Communications. He is the co-editor of "Letters From Young Activists: Today's Rebels Speak Out" (Nation Books 2005) and the upcoming "A New Queer Agenda" (NYU Press). His work has appeared in publications such as Utne Reader, Black Commentator, Left Turn, POZ, The Indypendent, City Limits, and in the anthology, "Spirited: Affirming the Soul of Black Lesbian and Gay Identity" (Red Bone Press 2006).

Jessica Greene

Jessica has worked with the HIV Department at Population Services International (PSI) since 2003 providing research and programmatic technical assistance to PSI's HIV prevention and behavior change communication (BCC) interventions with a focus on interpersonal communication. Jessica is co-founder of and a primary contributor to PSI's new BCC blog: www.psibccblog.com. Before joining PSI, Jessica worked on the Horizon’s program at the Population Council and with Helen Keller International on a multiple micronutrient clinical trial in Lombok, Indonesia. She received her Masters in Health Sciences from John’s Hopkins’ Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Darby Hickey

Darby Hickey is a national transgender and sex worker rights activist based in Washington, D.C. She is Interim Executive Director of Different Avenues, a peer-led program working for health, safety, and rights to counteract and prevent HIV, violence, and discrimination. Darby also has extensive experience as a reporter and writer. She has written for $pread Magazine, Colorlines, Left Turn, the Indypendent, DC North, and other publications. For three years Darby reported on Capitol Hill and the D.C. area for Free Speech Radio News, the country’s only worker-run, national progressive radio news service. Additionally, Darby sits on the board of Transgender Health Empowerment, a local service agency, and is involved with community radio station Radio CPR in Washington, D.C.

Coco Jervis

Coco Jervis is CHAMP's Director of Policy and Leadership Development. Prior to joining CHAMP she was the Assistant Director of Health Policy at Gay Men's Health Crisis, where she was assistant editor of Treatment Issues and worked to expand access to Medicaid and Medicare for people living with HIV/AIDS. Coco has worked in a variety of legal and public policy settings, including as a law clerk for the Whitman Walker Clinic and the New York City Commission on Human Rights. As an Everett fellow with Public Citizen's Congress Watch project, she assisted in the publication of two reports on the lobbying tactics of big PhRMA and the inflated research and development costs of prescription drugs. Coco earned a B.A. from City University of New York-Hunter College and a J.D. from Howard University School of Law. Her favorite food is broccoli.

Jennifer Johnson

Jennifer Johnson is the Writer/Editor for Population Action International. Prior to joining PAI, she worked in Corporate Marketing for T. Rowe Price where she creating marketing campaigns and educational resources for investors. She has also worked for a marketing consulting firm, developing donor loyalty campaigns for the American Red Cross and independent blood banks across the country. She has a B.A. in Political Science and Economics from Johns Hopkins University.

Sanday Chongo Kabange

Sanday Chongo Kabange is a Zambian media practitioner and award wining journalist with several years post qualification experience in electronic, print and online journalism. Kabange is currently working as a Reporter for the Voice of America, a News Producer for Radio Phoenix and a freelance writer for online publications such as www.africanews.com and www.reporter.co.za. He written and produced a number of articles on AIDS, climate change, global warming and their effects on the health and economy.

Previously, Kabange has reported for news outlets including Zambia Mail Newspaper, Herald Newspaper of Zimbabwe, Radio Choice FM and Zimbabwe Daily News. He is a member of associations like the Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA), Business and Economic Writers Forum, Media Information Network for Development (MIND), Press Association of Zambia (PAZA) and the Africa Foreign Correspondents Bureau (AFCB). His areas of interest are AIDS, science, economics, development and climate change.

Matthew Kavanagh

Matthew Kavanagh is an AIDS and economic justice activist and currently the Global Campaigns Director at RESULTS Educational Fund, an international anti-poverty organization working with grassroots advocates in over a dozen countries to mobilize the political will to transform global health, education, and economic policy. He was previously the Executive Director of Global Justice, home to the Student Global AIDS Campaign, working on global HIV/AIDS, international trade, and child health. He has worked with NGOs and social movement groups in the US, Latin America, and Southern Africa. Matt lives in Washington, DC.

Mara Kardas-Nelson

Mara Kardas-Nelson is the co-founder of AIDS Community Action Network, a student group based in Vancouver, BC focusing on community responses to HIV/AIDS. She has been involved in AIDS activism and advocacy since high school and will be joining the Treatment Action Campaign and the Globe and Mail in South Africa after the XVII International AIDS Conference. Her primary interests include harm reduction, housing, drug access, and legal policy. Mara recently received her B.A. from the University of British Columbia, where she studied International Relations and English Literature

Ted Kerr

Ted Kerr from Edmonton AB Canada is a writer, photographer and activist. He has worked with HIV Edmonton, Exposure: Edmonton's Queer Arts and Culture Festival and has recently finished an internship with the New York based Visual AIDS. You can read his work at http://tedkerrted.blogspot.com/.

James Learned

James Learned is CHAMP’s Manager of Operations and Programs. He’s been an advocate for HIV treatment access and health education since his involvement with ACT UP New York in the late 80s and early 90s. He was Director of Treatment Education at AIDS Community Research Initiative of America (ACRIA) for over five years, has written extensively about HIV and viral hepatitis for community-based publications and websites, co-founded the Hepatitis C Action & Advocacy Coalition (HAAC), and worked with the People with AIDS Health Group, the underground buyers club, and as a consultant with the New York State Department of Health AIDS Institute.

Cameron Lefevre

Cameron Lefevre is the Online Organizer for the Community HIV/AIDS Mobilization Project (CHAMP) and the coordinator of the AIDS2008.com community media/activist blog. Prior to joining CHAMP, Cameron was a member of the Student Global AIDS Campaign (SGAC) while in college. As a member of SGAC, he co-coordinated a number of national conferences, trainings and actions on Youth and HIV/AIDS activism, including the Student March Against AIDS in 2004, which drew over 4,000 young people to Washington, DC, USA to demand increased funding for the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. He also initiated Youth AIDS Day on February 26, 2004, which has become an annual event recognized by youth organizations around the world. At the 2008 International AIDS Conference, Cameron will be providing photo and video recordings of sessions, actions and activities.

Tyler LePard

Tyler LePard is the Media Manager for Population Action International. She came to PAI from RH Reality Check (www.rhrealitycheck.org) and has over eight years of experience in progressive causes, focusing on reproductive health and social justice movements. Her background includes advocacy, new media strategies, grassroots organizing, and direct health services. Tyler received her B.A. in American Studies from Wesleyan University and a Masters in Public Policy from George Washington University.

Alexander Lim

Alexander Lim is a Master of Public Health student at the University of Waterloo (Canada). Recently graduating with an HBSc in Biological Anthropology and Ethics Society & Law from the University of Toronto, Alex is the former Executive Director and Editor-in-Chief of The Toronto Globalist, an international affairs magazine. His interests lie in global health, human rights, and international development. This summer, he is working as a summer student for the McLaughlin-Rotman Centre for Global Health on the Collaborations in Health Biotechnology project. In previous summers, he has worked as a Teaching Assistant for Johns Hopkins University’s Centre for Talented Youth in the History of Disease and Introduction to Biomedical Science courses. Alex enjoys teaching and writing, and has attended the 2006 International AIDS Conference in Toronto as both a journalist and a volunteer.


Charles Long

Charles Ryan Long is 29-year-old HIV+, Black, Queer AIDS Activist. Originally from Chicago, IL he resides in Brooklyn, USA and is the Director of Development and Communications for the New York City AIDS Housing Network (NYCAHN). He has been involved in The AIDS for over a decade (in one capacity or another) and is always striving to represent those most at risk for and those living with HIV/AIDS. He is personally dedicated to the fight as it pertains to youth, Queer men of color, those of lower socio-economic status, former and current drug users and those who are formerly or presently homeless. He strives to bring the voices of those who have been systematically shut out of discussions to the table and is always looking to challenge the status quo as a means of moving the larger conversation forward. He is firmly rooted in the idea that the discourse around HIV/AIDS around the world must be challenged and redesigned regularly to continue to meet the needs of those living with and affected by the pandemic. While he recognizes there is still much work to be done and co factors such as poverty, homelessness, racism and homophobia to be obliterated, he nevertheless sees an end in sight.

Mehret Mandefro

Dr. Mehret Mandefro is Founding Director of TruthAIDS (www.truthaids.org), a preventative health non-profit that uses media advocacy as a tool of movement building. As a public health trained physician her primary research interests are the connections between human rights and health, HIV prevention program development, and translation efforts targeting marginalized communities. She has worked as a public health practitioner in Kenya, Botswana, South Africa and her native Ethiopia on issues of access to care, HIV treatment adherence, HIV-related stigma and health workers training. Dr. Mandefro is also an anthropologist that uses film as a medium of ethnography. She is currently a Robert Wood Johnson Health and Society Scholar at the University of Pennsylvania where she is advancing film as a method to teach and communicate about societal determinants of health. The focus of her current film project is the connection between violence prevention, cities and HIV as told through African American men. She received her M.D. from Harvard University, MSc in the Public Health of Developing Countries at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine as a Fulbright Scholar, and A.B. in Anthropology from Harvard University. To read more about her work check out: drmehretmandefro.com


Mimi Melles

Mimi Melles is the Manager of the International Youth Activist Network (iYAN)--a new project of the International Division of Advocates for Youth. The iYAN builds the capacity of youth-driven organizations in sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean to empower young people as powerful advocates within their own countries and at international forums on reproductive and sexual health and rights of youth, especially young women. Previously, Mimi managed Advocates’ Youth Activist Network (YAN), working with youth in the U.S. to fight for accurate sexual health information and services so that they can prevent unintended pregnancy and/or STIs, including HIV. She was hired to work at Advocates for Youth immediately after graduation with a B.A. in Socio-cultural Anthropology and Public & Community Health from the University of Maryland, College Park in Spring 2007. During her undergraduate career, Mimi served as International Partnerships Coordinator and Co-National Student Coordinator of the Student Global AIDS Campaign and as a member of the International Youth Leadership Council at Advocates for Youth

Emily M Metzner

While studying Medical Anthropology at NYU, Emily became compelled by the egregious health disparities in the HIV/AIDS pandemic, but frustrated with the sometimes hands-off anthropological approach to this exigent crisis. Having come down on the policy/advocacy side of things, Emily is pursuing her MPH at Hunter College's School of Urban Public Health with a specialization in Community Health Education. She is currently working on several exciting projects with CHAMP and is developing a culturally sensitive prevention education model for an organization working with Caribbean-American youth in Crown Heights and surrounding neighborhoods of Brooklyn. She daylights as a paralegal for an employment discrimination law firm.

David Munar

David Ernesto Munar is vice president for policy and communications at the AIDS Foundation of Chicago and board chair of the National Association of People with AIDS. He is covering the 2008 International AIDS Conference for the Windy City Times.

Alessandra Nilo

Alessandra Nilo is a Journalist specialized in Communication and Health. As a video maker, owned more than 40 titles and marketing campaigns. Because of her journalistic background, she has used communication as one of the main instruments in the fight against the HIV/AIDS epidemic. She has worked as editor of the Health segment of a statewide newspaper, where she created the first column about AIDS in a newspaper in the northeast of Brazil. She also produced, edited and presented a one-hour TV show dedicated to Health and Culture.

She is co-founder and currently executive director of GESTOS, Seropositivity, Communication and Gender Issues that was created in 1993 (www.gestos.org). For fifteen years, GESTOS has produced memorable campaigns promoting prevention and the human rights of PLWHA, especially women.

Member of the Executive Committee of LACCASO, the Latin American and Caribbean Council of AIDS Service Organizations (www.laccaso.org), she is also coordinator of One World, One Fight a network dedicated to strengthen the theme AIDS and Social Development.

Juliana Rincón Parra

Juliana Rincón is a blogger currently living in Colombia. She works as the editor in citizen media video area for GlobalVoicesOnline.org and also teaches a course in Emerging Media at EAFIT University in Medellín. In her spare time, she puts time into Otrabanda.org, a startup company she co-founded working in emerging media tool appropriation in her city. She is blogging at the AIDS conference for the Open Society Institute.


Jim Pickett

At the end of 2004, after five years as a Senior Consultant the Chicago Department of Public Health, international AIDS advocate Jim Pickett began his current position as Director of Advocacy at the AIDS Foundation of Chicago. As AFC’s representative on Capitol Hill, Jim worked closely with diverse stakeholders in Illinois and across the U.S. in helping shape and advance Ryan White CARE Act reauthorization legislation, which was signed into law in 2007. As a leading advocate for new HIV prevention strategies, Jim co-founded the International Rectal Microbicide Advocates in 2005. Jim currently serves as the co-chair of the Chicago Task Force on LGBT Substance Use and Abuse and is the principal creator of the new gay men's sexual health and wellness website and blog called LifeLube.org. A regular contributor to PositivelyAware.com, he also just started a blog on TheBody.com, and has been a featured guest on the FeastofFools.net podcast.

Lova Rakotomalala

I am a research scientist in Immunology/biomedical engineering for the nonprofit organization "Cytometry For Life" based at Purdue University. My role is to find practical solutions to the current lack of effective low-cost, portable solutions for disenfranchised remote regions in matters of HIV/AIDS treatments, specifically CD4 testing and monitoring. I obtained a PhD in Basic Medical Sciences from Purdue University in March 2007. I am also currently a Global Voices Online editor and author, reporting conversations from communities in Madagascar and sub-saharan Africa.

I want to start a conversation on the right way to approach the technological gap in resource-limited regions from a financial and strategical point of view.

L. Ramki Ramakrishnan

L. Ramki Ramakrishnan works with a non-profit called Solidarity and Action Against The HIV Infection in India (www.SAATHII.org), headquartered in Chennai, India.

He and his teams work out of five states in India to strengthen health-care (including HIV care) systems in government and community settings, and advocate for stigma-free HIV prevention and treatment services for MSM, transgender people and other marginalized groups.

They also assist poz and queer community groups in such areas as writing grant proposals, documenting programs, conducting situation assessment studies, and analyzing and interpreting data. Some of their work is being presented at the conference - see http://www.saathii.org/aids2008

Ramki graduated from the University of Texas at Austin in 2000 with a Ph.D. in the life sciences; and is, in other lives, an ecologist, musician, bi/queer activist and nature lover.

Kaytee Riek

Kaytee Riek is the Grassroots Organizer for Health GAP, a non-profit advocacy organization that works on eliminating the barriers to access to medicine for people living with HIV/AIDS in the developing world. She has been and AIDS activist for six years, working first with a broad array of US-based activist groups. Kaytee now spends her spare time working with ACT UP Philadelphia, an organization led by people of color and people living with HIV and fighting for the rights of people living with HIV in Philadelphia, the US and around the world. Kaytee believes that AIDS will not end unless the root causes of the epidemic – poverty, globalization and greed, discrimination – are addressed, and people get together and collectively demand action and accountability from world leaders.

Walt Senterfitt

Walt is an epidemiologist with the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health where he is in charge of the ethical and scientific review of all proposed research. He has done HIV research for more than 20 years in areas including use of alternative and complementary therapies by PLWHA, correlates of primary/acute HIV infection, service utilization and unmet needs by PLWHA, and prevention with positives. From 2000-2002, Walt directed CDC demonstration projects in prevention for positives as a visiting scientist. Walt adds his 45 years' experience as a social justice activist to his clinical and epidemiologic training and 20 years living with HIV in his service as Board Chair for CHAMP. One of his roles at CHAMP is to help assure that scientific and other evidence are available and understandable to PLWHA and other prevention justice advocates.


Jasvinder Sehgal

Jasvinder Sehgal is a Free lance journalist and an AIDS activist who is presently working for Voice Of America Radio, Hindi Service.

He is filing reports from the Pink City of India i.e Jaipur.

Jasvinder is attached with HIV/AIDS journalism from last Six years and has covered 15th International Aids Conference, Bangkok, 3rd and 4th international HIV/AIDS conferences held at Rio, Brazil and Sydney, Australia respectively.

Apart from covering Asia pacific HIV/AIDS conference at Colombo, Srilanka, he has also covered various regional and national conferences held in different parts of the country.

Jasvinder prefers to do positive stories based on the disease and often reports on economic and social aspect of the disease.

He has also presented a technical paper entitled "Public health through Public media"in "International Radio Conference" held in Melbourne, Australia.

Jasvinder is in Media from last 20years and also contributes for All India Radio and Indian state owned TV channel "Doosrdarshan"

He is also adviser to positive network of HIV/AIDS persons based in Rajasthan, India..

Jasvinder is famous for raising the voices of positives at all fronts and is fighting for their rights,discrimination and stigma.

Waheedah Shabazz-El

Waheedah Shabazz-El, a 54-year-old African American Muslim woman, is a retired Postal Worker who was diagnosed with AIDS in 2003. Since her diagnosis, she has become a fervent member of the social justice movement and an AIDS activist, advocate, educator and community organizer. Certified in HIV prevention, she is an organizer and spokesperson for ACT-UP Philadelphia. Waheedah is a Community Organizer and Trainer with the Community HIV/AIDS Mobilization Project (CHAMP). Waheedah is a graduate of Project TEACH Outside and Project TEACH, educational advocacy programs directed by Philadelphia Fight. She is employed by Philadelphia Fight as an HIV counselor and tester and volunteers as a peer educator. She is an organizer for the Philadelphia County Coalition for Prison Health-Care, an editor of Prison Health newsletter, and a member of the PRHCN (Prison Re-Entry Health-Care Network).
She is also a member of the Ryan White Positive Committee for Philadelphia’s Office of HIV Planning.

Waheedah is currently the sole community representative on the HPTN 064 Protocol Team, which is in the process of developing an HIV prevention clinical trial targeting women at risk in the United States. She is the Community Constituency Representative for the INSIGHT Clinical Trials Network at Temple University Hospital and serves as Vice Chair of the Penn Center for AIDS Research Community Advisory Board. She is also a member of the National Association of People with AIDS (NAPWA).

She keeps close alliances with local schools, faith-based groups, county prisons, homeless shelters, recovery houses and abused women programs, where she shares her life experiences and teaches HIV prevention. She continues to advocate for marginalized communities both nationally and internationally levels. Waheedah resides in the Overbrook section of Philadelphia. Recently widowed, Waheedah is the mother of three adults and has four teenage grandchildren, all of whom support her in her role as community advocate and as she offers a glimmer of hope to the many people on which the struggle has taken its toll.


Max Siegel

Max Siegel contracted HIV at 17 and went on to devote his young adulthood to aiding in the prevention and treatment of this virus. He soon led student-based prevention interventions at Arizona State University, worked as a consumer advocate for women and youth living with HIV and AIDS, became an Infectious disease specialist through his county health department, and coordinated an HIV counseling and testing program at a Phoenix nonprofit. He has been a featured speaker for various community-based organizations and hundreds of college graduate and undergraduate courses, and he was one of eleven witnesses to testify in the first-ever House Oversight and Government Reform hearing on abstinence-only-until-marriage sexuality education policy. Currently 24-years-old, he relocated to Washington DC to join AIDS Alliance for Children, Youth & Families as a policy associate in April of 2008.

Paul Silva

Paul Silva is a communications officer with the Open Society Institute's Public Health Program, where he coordinates advocacy efforts on issues such as harm reduction, sexual health and rights, law and health, palliative care, and mental health. Prior to joining OSI, Paul worked at the American Civil Liberties Union as a media relations associate from 2004 to 2007. He has also served as the communications manager for PAX/Real Solutions to Gun Violence, and as a communications associate for Catholics for Choice. Paul is currently a board member of Positive Health Project - a harm reduction agency in New York that provides health and social services for drug users and other marginalized communities, including sex workers and transgender people. Paul has a B.A. in Communication from The George Washington University.

Jamila Taylor

Jamila Taylor is responsible for tracking and analyzing U.S. policies, legislation, and Executive Branch decisions affecting sexual and reproductive health and rights for the Center for Health and Gender Equity (CHANGE)--a U.S.-based nongovernmental organization seeking to promote U.S. international policies that advance the health and rights of women, girls, and other vulnerable populations worldwide. Prior to joining CHANGE, she was Global Policy Coordinator for The AIDS Institute where she worked on issues related to women and HIV & AIDS and federal appropriations for global health programs. She was also instrumental in the development and implementation of the WIN Project - 'Women Informing Now’; an interagency program of The AIDS Institute that focuses international and domestic efforts around critical issues for women and families impacted by HIV & AIDS. Ms. Taylor also has more than three years Hill experience as health policy staff in the U.S. House of Representatives. She is published in the fields of Public Health, Public Policy, and Political Science. She received a Master's degree in Public Administration from Virginia Commonwealth University and is currently completing a Doctor of Philosophy degree in Political Science from Howard University.


Josh Thomas

Josh Thomas ended a long hiatus from the AIDS movement in 2006 by traveling to the International AIDS Conference in Toronto to report for his first day at the Community HIV/AIDS Mobilization Project (CHAMP). After serving a year as an intern while completing his B.A. at Hunter College (CUNY), Josh moved to Providence to continue as Administrative and Research Assistant in 2007. A younger Josh first engaged a spectrum of social justice activism in the early nineties in the AIDS, anti-war and reproductive justice movements, including several years first in ACT UP/Austin and later in ACT UP/New Orleans. Upon learning of his seropositive HIV/HCV status, Josh relocated to New York City to secure access to health care. There he engaged in a period of treatment and self-care, completed college, and eventually stepped back into AIDS activism. Josh cooks a mean chicken fried steak and gets on famously with his grandma.


Kim Whipkey

Kimberly is responsible for implementing CHANGE’s outreach activities, advocacy, partnership development, and grassroots mobilization around U.S. international policies and programs related to sexual and reproductive health and rights—including HIV and AIDS, international family planning, and gender-based violence. Prior to joining CHANGE, she served as the Maine Grassroots Organizer for Planned Parenthood of Northern New England (PPNNE) where she identified, educated, and mobilized supporters around local legislation affecting the sexual and reproductive health and rights of Maine women and girls. Kim graduated from Bates College with a Bachelors degree in Sociology and a secondary concentration in Women and Gender Studies.


Pete Witzler

I work with a network of 60 student chapters at medical, public health, nursing and undergraduate schools in the US. Students advocate for an evidence and human rights based response by the US government to the Global AIDS pandemic. I am a 2002 graduate of University of Cincinnati with a degree in Environmental Studies. Prior to joining Physicians for Human Rights, I worked as a Citizen Outreach Director for the State PIRGS and the Fund for Public Interest Research. For over five years I worked with college students on environmental and progressive public education campaigns, trained students how to become effective advocates, and raised millions of dollars for environmental and progressive organizations. I also worked for MoveOn.org's national Get Out the Vote campaign during the 2004 presidential elections as the Lead Organizer in my hometown of Toledo, Ohio. While not working on Global AIDS issues, I enjoy spending time in the outdoors hiking, sailing, fishing or any other water-sports. Pete is a regular contributor to the PHR Student Program Blog www.KnowDareAct.org.