Health Care Adviser

Last week, CDC awarded $42 million to community-based organizations (CBOs) in cities and communities across the nation to support HIV prevention efforts. This funding puts resources directly in the hands of those with cultural knowledge and local perspective—those who have the best chance to reach people who might otherwise not access HIV testing or other prevention services.

These partnerships are a vital part of CDC’s fight against HIV. Community-based organizations are part of the daily fabric of our lives and a critical link to providing HIV prevention services where we live, work, and play.

Funding of CBOs is also consistent with the new National HIV/AIDS Strategy, released on July 13, 2010, by the White House. T

Read more…

NEW YORK — Katrina Clark and Lindsay Greenawalt have much in common. Bright women in their 20s, raised by single mothers, keenly curious about the men whose donated sperm helped give them life.

Clark’s search for her father succeeded after only a month, though with a bittersweet aftermath. Greenawalt is still searching, seven years after she started – persisting despite doubts and frustrations.

“I’ve dreamt of you since I was a little girl,” Greenawalt wrote to her unknown dad in a Father’s Day blog posting in June. “There are so many things I want to know about you.”

Greenawalt, who lives near Cleveland, and Clark, a college student in Washington, D.C., are part of an increasingly outspoken generation of donor offspring. Read more…

The cultural diversity of communities of color is to be celebrated. We have overcome adversity and barriers at every turn with the hope of change. With this same determination, we face the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Communities of color disproportionately account for an alarming number of HIV/AIDS cases. As an Afro-Latina, HIV/AIDS prevention advocate, and public health professional, I am very familiar with our challenge. The statistics and numbers constantly run through my head: African Americans account for almost half the number of people living with HIV; Latino/Hispanics account for 17% of new HIV infections in the U.S.

Read more…

COLUMBUS, Ohio — Emergency room nurse Erin Riley suffered bruises, scratches and a chipped tooth last year from trying to pull the clamped jaws of a psychotic patient off the hand of a doctor at a suburban Cleveland hospital.

A second assault just months later was even more upsetting: She had just finished cutting the shirt off a drunken patient and was helping him into his hospital gown when he groped her.

“The patients always come first – and I don’t think anybody has a question about that – but I don’t think it has to be an either-or situation,” said Riley, a registered nurse for five years.

Violence against nurses and other medical professionals appears to be increasing around the country as the number of drug addicts, alcoholics and psychiatric patients showing up at emergency rooms climbs.

Nurses have responded, in part, by seeking tougher criminal penalties for assaults against health care workers.

“It’s come to the point where nurses are saying, ‘Enough is enough. Read more…