Once we finally got started with the conference the next day, the HIV information that we came to get began to flow. The most interesting and remarkable sessions I attended included the sessions on Advocacy , Incarcerated Women and Transgender Issues . Let me start with Advocacy . First, Julie Davids rocks. I have never really had someone define what an advocate is or what activism means.
Activism mobilizes people to act as a united group to increase their power to affect change.
Activism increases our power to raise the social cost of bad policy. When we fought to include female-specific illness under the CDC AIDS diagnosis, that was a form of advocacy. That was an initiative that changed the way we medically treat HIV-positive women. That is as true today as it was back in the early 1980s. Locally, we are still fighting for ADAP funds, the HIV medication rights of inmates, and affordable medication co-pays at Grady Health System.