Dear Friend of NAPWA:
It’s been an extremely busy month for NAPWA. Our efforts to lift the federal funding ban on needle exchange—a central goal of April’s record-setting annual AIDSWATCH lobbying campaign—is finally bearing fruit as the House voted to end the ban this past week. The Obama administration is significantly advancing another NAPWA priority: eliminating the discriminatory ban on HIV-positive visitors and immigrants to our country. We believe it prudent to take time to respond to some recent harsh attacks against NAPWA, which erroneously suggest we’ve lost touch with those we represent.
The National Association of People with AIDS (NAPWA) is the oldest national AIDS organization, as well as the first network of people living with HIV/AIDS in the world. Our commitment to the now more diverse HIV/AIDS community begins at the top. Our President and CEO is an African American Gay man living with HIV. Over half our board of trustees are persons living with HIV and AIDS—of all races, genders and sexual orientations. We are proud to be working on behalf of thousands of persons living with HIV and AIDS. We utilize email, national surveys and our relationships with the nation’s AIDS service organizations to ensure that our goals are consistent with the broad and diverse HIV/AIDS community. We are constantly innovating to improve these communications (most recently with the launch of this blog) and to build a sustainable membership base.
In every region of America, invaluable AIDS Service Organizations face enormous financial crises and NAPWA has not been immune from these challenges. Both personal and corporate contributions have declined. Our staff has sacrificed and our board is working hard to ensure that our resources remain secure and properly spent through regular, independent audits and objective outside evaluations. But make no mistake, while these are challenging times, NAPWA is at work today and will be in the future. We will never retreat from our founding principles of empowering those with HIV and AIDS to live full and better lives. We are not “in a crisis” as some have alleged. Organizations across the country are suffering lay-offs and are unable to pay staff and provide life-saving services. This is the real crisis!
Activism can and should take on many forms. Some of our critics clearly prefer confrontation. That’s fine, but advocacy need not always take on an adversarial approach. There’s a real need and room for both approaches in our common fight to save the lives of people with HIV/AIDS. No one strategy should dominate the discussion over what is the right role for HIV advocacy and activism. In fact, now more than ever, we need to be united in our efforts.
The PLWHA community today has many allies and stakeholders. It includes health care professionals and those who work in industry, AIDS service organizations, government and academia. Although NAPWA has always insisted that its governing board be majority HIV-positive, we are also proud to include persons from all these sectors and believe a great strength of our board is its diversity. Aside from persons living with HIV and AIDS, our board reserves seats for no one. Yet recently, a few critics have issued loud calls that NAPWA forcefully remove from its board, persons who happen to work in the health care industry. The inherent assumption behind these calls is that industry representatives have used their seats to exercise undue influence over NAPWA’s policies, positions and advocacy. Nothing could be further from the truth. We insist that all our board members be dedicated to our cause and conduct themselves with the utmost integrity.
Across the country, HIV services organizations, large and small, have private corporate interests on their boards of directors. NAPWA would never presume to dictate the composition of another organization’s board beyond what is contained in the Denver Principles; that would be inappropriate. Sadly, a few outside organizations believe they have the right to dictate to us how we should govern ourselves.
Do not allow the negative comments from a very vocal minority to depress your spirit or convince you that NAPWA does not represent the needs of persons living with HIV. We are committed to the vision of the Denver Principles and to ensuring we remain the INDEPENDENT voice of people living with HIV.
Now we will return to the urgent work at hand: helping to strengthen and build strong local advocacy groups for women with HIV, empowering youth with our summer Positive Youth Institute, building on our Common Threads initiative and continuing our efforts to ensure that real health care reform that serves the interests of the HIV/AIDS community is passed this year.
On behalf of our members, the Board of Trustees and NAPWA Staff, we thank you for your continued support. Please visit our blog often to stay informed!
Frank Oldham, Jr. President and CEO of NAPWA
Michelle Lopez Chair, Board of Trustees
