AIDS Watch

CHLP Senior PJP Attorney Jada Hicks and Policy and Advocacy Manager Amir Sadeghi will be presenting at AIDS United's AIDS Watch in Washington DC on Tuesday, April 1.

HIV Criminalization: A Public Health Threat That Health Departments Can Address
1:15 PM – 2:15 PM — Workshops Session #1

HIV criminalization continues to endanger the health and well-being of people living with HIV (PLHIV), especially Black people, Latine people, working-class people, people living with disabilities, and women, and undermine public health efforts to end the HIV epidemic. State and local health departments play a critical role in HIV criminalization, whether it is exacerbating, mitigating, or eliminating the harms of these laws, policies, and practices.

An introductory presentation will explain HIV criminalization, including its origins, scope, common features, and disparate impact on marginalized communities. A presenter will share their work to train and support health departments in addressing HIV criminalization. An additional presenter will highlight a recent example of a health department working to reduce these harms through education of decision-makers and support of PLHIV. Finally, an advocate will detail their coalition’s work to secure the support of state and local health departments for the repeal of an HIV criminalization offense.

Speakers: Jada Hicks, CHLP, Washington, DC; Dori Molozanov, NASTAD, Washington D.C.; Ronnie Taylor, Free State Justice, Maryland; and Adrian Guzman, NYSDOH, New York 

The Threat Has Always Been Here: Stigmatized Diseases and the Weaponization of Health Data
3:35 PM – 4:35 PM — Workshops Session #3

This panel will discuss the evolving legal, policy, and ethical landscape about the dangers of porous and inconsistent safeguards surrounding sensitive HIV health information. For decades, mandatory disease reporting requirements have led to the collection and analysis of HIV-related information that is then shared across jurisdictions without uniform legal protections in place to prevent patient data from being weaponized against people living with HIV. This has undermined trust between PLHIV and our medical and public health infrastructure, jeopardizing public health by alienating marginalized people away from care. For several years, molecular HIV surveillance (MHS), a pillar of the initiative to end the HIV epidemic in the United States, has inflamed these issues even more by forcing states to map sexual and social networks of HIV transmission without the knowledge or consent of PLHIV.

Panelists will unpack the public health rationale for MHS and discuss its legal and ethical issues by drawing from the groundswell of PLHIV-led advocacy targeting public health practices that harm their communities. Participants will learn the realities of HIV criminalization in the United States, the advocacy movement formed to dismantle it, and engage with principles to better protect the health, dignity, and bodily autonomy of PLHIV and people affected by HIV.

Speakers: Amir Sadeghi, CHLP, New York, NY; Kelly Flannery, PWN-USA, Philadelphia, PA, Benjamin Brooks The Institute for Health Research & Policy at Whitman-Walker, Venita Ray The US People Living with HIV Caucus