The Female Condom – where the girls – AND boys – are

Please join IRMA, the AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition (AVAC) and the Center for Health and Gender Equity (CHANGE) for the first IRMA global teleconference of 2009.

Get the skinny on the NEW female condom and discuss its implications for anal sex.

Featuring presentations by Serra Sippel, CHANGE Executive Director, and Mitchell Warren, AVAC Executive Director. Slides and other materials will be made available on the IRMA website in advance of the call.

Thursday, February 26, 2009

Kuala Lumpur – midnite
Mumbai – 9:30pm
Nairobi – 7pm
Cape Town – 6pm
London – 4pm
New York – 11am
Lima – 11am
Chicago – 10am
Los Angeles – 8am

The conference ID # is the same for both international and domestic participants.
If you are calling from outside the US or Canada, please send a note to jpickett@aidschicago.org as soon as possible to receive the appropriate dial-in number.

“Condoms save lives,” continues Newman. “FPHS will be giving away one dozen condoms free to visitors at all of our clinics from now until the close of business on December 23, 2008. Additionally, we challenge the new Congress, the new Administration, and all leaders to provide principled leadership on HIV/AIDS awareness and treatment by promoting health care policy based on two pillars of public health and American government – science and reason.  We need accurate sexuality education to be taught consistently throughout our nation.”

As the global community marks World AIDS Day on December 1, advocates and policy experts welcome the promise by the incoming Obama administration to put sound scientific evidence at the forefront of the U.S. global AIDS program (PEPFAR). President-elect Obama’s campaign Web site states that the “first priority is…to ensure that best practices—not ideology—… drive funding for HIV/AIDS programs.” And indeed, both the new administration and the incoming Congress will have opportunities next year to do just that.

In August 2008, the U.S. government reauthorized the PEPFAR program, committing $39 billion over five years to the global fight against HIV. The new PEPFAR law features many improvements over the law that guided the program’s first five years; however, it, too, falls short in terms of HIV prevention policy.

What PEFPAR will actually look like on the ground later next year will depend largely on the new administration. In 2009, the incoming administration will develop a plan to implement the reauthorized PEPFAR that could remedy or at least mitigate some of the law’s shortcomings. It will make a host of crucial decisions, from how best to prevent the sexual transmission of HIV to how to better integrate HIV prevention and reproductive health services.

Backed by a growing body of evidence, policies at the global level already recognize the importance of linkages between HIV and reproductive health services. But the United States remains a major obstacle to effective integration, and the PEPFAR law is silent on the importance of linkages. That the U.S. government has failed to join and actively support the global integration consensus is exacerbated by the erosion of U.S. support for international family planning programs.

The issue of better integrating HIV and reproductive health services is especially important in countries with high rates of HIV infection, which often are impoverished and have poor health infrastructures. It makes eminent sense to offer women the services they need—whether related to HIV or to reproductive health—in settings they already frequent. For instance, PEPFAR should pay for HIV testing, counseling and referral at sites that women already visit regularly to obtain family planning services. In turn, women should be able to obtain contraceptives to avert pregnancies they themselves don’t want at sites they already visit to receive HIV services.

Embracing proven interventions that promote HIV–reproductive health service linkages, along with promoting needed increases in international family planning assistance, would allow the United States to begin reclaiming its role as a leader in international sexual and reproductive health.

Click here for more information on:

Making crucial changes to U.S. global HIV prevention policy

The urgent need for better HIV–reproductive health service linkages

The role of contraception in preventing HIV

The role of reproductive health providers in preventing HIV

Meeting the sexual and reproductive health needs of people living with HIV

A Range of Concerns Would Need to Be Addressed
To Ensure that All Women Benefit

A growing number of women’s health advocates are urging bolder and potentially transformative steps toward greater “contraceptive convenience,” with the aim of making contraceptive use easier and more sustainable for women, according to a new Guttmacher policy analysis. These advocates argue that many of the ways in which contraceptives are made available in the United States are no longer grounded in the reality of current scientific advancements or modern women’s lives.

Research shows that half of all adult women at risk of unintended pregnancy are inadequately protected because, over the course of a given year, they don’t use contraceptives at all, use them inconsistently or incorrectly, or have a gap in use lasting more than a month. A complex web of reasons contributes to women’s difficulties in using contraceptives, ranging from method dissatisfaction to life disruptions. Advocates of a contraceptive convenience agenda are pushing for measures to break down many of the medical and societal barriers to better use.

“In a variety of ways, society makes women’s contraceptive access needlessly hard, and it can and should be made easier. By stripping away layers of medical intervention or requirements that are outmoded or unnecessary, we can go beyond current efforts to make contraceptive service delivery more user friendly,” says Sneha Barot, author of the new analysis. “For instance, many women’s health experts have concluded that a number of hormonal contraceptives—including the birth control pill—should be available to women directly at pharmacies, without the requirement of a doctor’s prescription. Such steps would make contraceptives easier to obtain and use without interruption, and would also decrease other financial and logistical hurdles.”

Barot’s analysis points out, however, that proposals to “demedicalize” contraception also raise serious concerns. For example, removing the prescription requirement for oral contraceptives could make pills unaffordable for low-income women if it also resulted in the removal of private insurance and Medicaid coverage. Likewise, eliminating the need to go to doctors or family planning clinics for contraceptives could jeopardize access to other preventive health services normally provided in these settings. Minority communities, especially, could be affected, potentially aggravating existing inequalities.

“Any efforts to push for over-the-counter status would need to resolve serious challenges —including cost and access to health care—that marginalized populations would be facing,” says Barot. “To make contraceptives easier to use, even without the benefit of instructions from a doctor, would also mean revamping package labeling to make it more comprehensible and accurate.”

Barot further notes that a number of other measures also need to be pursued to truly make contraceptives easier for women to obtain and use. One of the most important of these is to create a fundamental shift in societal attitudes toward contraception, so that users will face fewer restrictions—and more support.

“Making access to and use of contraceptives easier is not trivializing an important reproductive health issue or promoting irresponsible attitudes or behavior—quite the opposite,” says Barot. “‘Convenience’ in the area of contraceptive access would translate into practical and meaningful support for women who are trying to avoid unwanted pregnancies, improve their health, and better plan their lives.”

Click here to read “Making the Case for a ‘Contraceptive Convenience’ Agenda,” by Sneha Barot, in the Fall 2008 issue of the Guttmacher Policy Review.

Click here for more information on:

Improving contraceptive use in the United States

Facts on contraceptive use

Facts on contraceptive services

DAILY WOMEN’S HEALTH POLICY REPORT
OPINION | CDC Study on Rate of Common STIs Among Girls, Young Women ‘Already Old’ to Public Health Workers, Opinion Piece Says
[March 21, 2008]

Recent findings from a CDC study that about 25% of U.S. girls and young women ages 14 to 19 have at least one of four common sexually transmitted infections is “already old” news for public health workers, Robert Fullilove, associate dean at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, Adaora Adimora, associate professor of medicine at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, and Peter Leone of the North Carolina Division of Public Health write in a Washington Post opinion piece. They add that public health workers “fear this latest study will have its 15 minutes in the spotlight and also fade from view,” just like a similar study released more than 10 years ago by the Institute of Medicine did.

“Despite the huge costs that [STIs] imposed on our health care system, awareness of their importance was all but absent from the public consciousness” when the IOM study was released, the authors write. They add that the “national silence” on STIs might be associated with the country’s “difficulty discussing the roles that race and poverty play in these trends.” The “taboo” of talking about sexual behavior, poverty and race is one “obvious reason” rates of STIs remain high, the authors write, adding, another is “that the incidence of [STIs], particularly HIV, is concentrated in poor, segregated neighborhoods that are characterized by high rates of incarceration.” The “shift” in marriage and courtship patterns that result from men being incarcerated, as well as an increase in the number of “multiple concurrent sexual partnerships,” also are contributing to the problem, according to the authors.

STIs cost the U.S. “tens of billions of dollars” annually, “but with the exception of HIV infection, [STIs] remain the elephant in the room when it comes to the national conversation about health and health care,” the authors write. They add, “We can no longer have effective [STI] prevention campaigns in poor communities of color if they treat one person at a time or ignore social conditions underpinning high rates of HIV and other” STIs. “Simply put, we will never rid the U.S. of HIV and other [STIs] if our only weapon is medical treatment,” the authors write, concluding, “And if we are unable to engage in a national dialogue about the sexual health of our youths and the social dynamics that drive [STIs], this epidemic will go largely ignored, and many more lives will be lost” (Fullilove et al., Washington Post, 3/21).