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Jeffrey Stockbridge photographs people on the streets of Philadelphia dealing with opioid addiction and his work will be on exhibit at Drexel University. This and beauty and function of his work is provoking questions about stigma, suffering, and exploitation.
A combination of two long-acting injectable anti-HIV drugs taken once monthly had a very low rate of treatment failure and a favourable safety profile, according to results from two phase III trials presented at the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI 2019).
Learn about CD4 cells – what they are, how HIV affects them, CD4 tests and CD4 counts, and what these mean for HIV infection and treatment.
Activist Mark Hannay explains what the bill means for people living with HIV and how it will shape the 2020 election debate.
Over the years, Judith Grisel struggled with alcohol, marijuana and cocaine. But along the way, she also became interested in the neuroscience of addiction. Now it has been 30 years without using drugs or alcohol for Grisel, a professor of psychology at Bucknell University, where she studies how addictive drugs work on the brain.
Positive Women's Network Launches Online Advocacy Tool for People Living With HIV
Naloxone saves lives by reversing opioid overdoses. Learn how it works and how to access it. IAA usually has free Narcan kits provided by the State of Alaska.
African-American women ageing with HIV often have histories of abuse and trauma, in addition to other medical conditions. Here, a few share their stories.
People receiving medication-assisted treatment (“MAT”)1 for opioid addiction often are forced by courts and other government agencies to stop taking their addiction medication. A judge or probation officer might require an individual to stop MAT because of the mistaken belief that the individual is “substituting one addiction for another” and not truly in recovery. These officials often do not understand how opioid addiction and MAT work and do not realize that this conduct can violate anti-discrimination laws. In addition, employers sometimes deny jobs to people receiving MAT.
Real-world data from a large American chain of retail pharmacies show that only two in five people keep on taking pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) for two years after starting, researchers report in the Journal of the International AIDS Society.
Safehouse is a privately run non-profit that has the support of top officials in Philadelphia and plans to open the city’s first safe-injection site for heroin users. Although such sites have shown benefit in Canada and Europe, federal prosecutors have launched a legal challenge this week stating the sites would violate a section of the 1980’s Controlled Substances Act which was meant for to closing down “crack houses”.
Keegan Hernandez was in fifth grade when his father died of an opioid overdose. A year later, he organized a 5k run that raised a staggering $14,000 for a local organization. Mackenzie Ehlert found her father dead after he took prescription fentanyl and heroin. She donated all of her Christmas money to the same cause. These two are working together to define their lives by triumph and not tragedy.
I exposed myself because I felt like I was hiding, hiding a part of me all because I only had some basic knowledge and false myths about HIV/AIDS. I feared people were going to treat me differently like I was nasty and contagious.
With America's deadly drug crisis looming large for years to come, public health officials say charting a path to nationwide recovery requires a multipronged approach, from treating those already addicted to tackling the epidemic's root causes.
In order to adequately address the HIV epidemic in the United States, two advocates argue that the high cost of antiretroviral drugs must be addressed.
A social or public stigma starts as we develop stereotypes of people addicted to opioids, without a home, or recently released from prison. We ascribe negative attributes to whole categories of people, believing, for example, that people who use opioids are dangerous, immoral, of certain social or demographic backgrounds, or criminals.
While the risk of HIV transmission through breastfeeding when the mother's viral load is undetectable is also low, the level of risk is not zero as is the case with sexual transmission when the person with HIV has an undetectable viral load.
Medication-assisted treatment with methadone or buprenorphine is still the gold standard of treatment for pregnant women with opioid use disorder. Despite some recent studies which indicate medically-supervised withdrawal in the fetus may not be as dangerous as we previously thought, relapse rates for the mother are still high.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has announced a key step in its effort to encourage development of over-the-counter (OTC) versions of the opioid overdose reversal drug naloxone.
This refreshing series following an African-American millennial woman living with HIV avoids the sappy and sentimental.
Emilee, now 31 years old, began raiding her parents liquor cabinet at the age of 14. By the time she hit high school, Emilee was smoking marijuana and telling herself that she would never be one of “those people”. It wasn’t long before Emilee was introduced to ecstasy, cocaine, pills, crack, and eventually heroin. Soon she realized she was in the grips of addiction.
Get basic information about viral load – what it is, when to have it tested, and how the results are used – and sex differences in viral load.
There is much that the recovery advocacy movement can learn from the LGBT rights movement of recent decades. The latter movement is one of the most successful social movements in history as judged by the speed at which it has elicited broad changes in cultural attitudes and policies of import to the LGBT community.
A new study found that terms such as "alcoholic" and "addict" carry more stigma than more recent terms such as "person with a substance use disorder." Explicit bias is recognized as a contributor to the stigma of addiction but the authors also used a word-association task and found evidence for implicit bias.
HIV treatment involves taking HIV medication every day, exactly as prescribed to lower the amount of HIV in your blood. Keeping the amount of the virus in your blood very low -- so low that a test can't detect it (called an undetectable viral load) -- is the best thing you can do to stay healthy.
New numbers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that drug overdoses killed more than 70,000 Americans in 2017, a record.
The 2019 HIV League Scholarship application will be open until January 31st, 2019. Below are the criteria for an individual to apply for the HIV League Scholarship:
• You are living with HIV
• You have an unweighted GPA of at least 2.5
• You will be enrolled in an institution of higher education as a full-time or part-time student for at least one year beginning with the Fall 2019 semester
• You are going to an institution of higher education in the United States or a United States territory. American citizenship is not a requirement
These 10 pieces run the gamut of topics and formats, including interviews, personal stories, advice about treatment and medical care, and news stories that made national headlines.
Caroline’s story is one we hear far too often. At the ripe age of 14, Caroline began drinking and smoking marijuana, quickly taking to pain medication. By the age of 17 she was in full blown addiction.
As you prepare for all of the gifts, parties and dinners headed your way this season, here are some ideas for how to decrease stress during the holidays.
A new study, published in the American Journal of Public Health on Thursday by Stanford researchers Allison Pitt, Keith Humphreys, and Margaret Brandeau, tries to parse out how America can reduce the death toll. Using a mathematical model, the study brings together research and expert opinions to calculate the epidemic’s death toll and how different policy ideas can stem the toll.
On Nov. 20, 2018, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force released a draft recommendation that could transform HIV-1 pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) scale-up in the United States.
In the midst of this crisis, lethally potent street drugs are increasingly affordable and available, while their lifesaving antidote, naloxone, is increasingly expensive and difficult to obtain.
Thanksgiving marks an important season for all of us to take a moment and remember the little things in life—and every little thing we’re thankful for.
Gifts will be wrapped in exchange for donations. Proceeds will be split among participating organizations based on the percentage of volunteer hours worked. Children 8+ are welcome; no more than 3 young children during any one shift.
"The best gift we could give this movement is to step aside," said prominent HIV activist Phill Wilson at the U.S. Conference on AIDS. "This younger generation is smarter, younger, wiser, more capable, and they have the foundation that we built."
"It takes a village to heal the wounded—and we have all been wounded; healing and wholeness require resources and relationships beyond the self and beyond closed social silos. Personal survival hinges on a greater social unity and common purpose; what we share in common is far more important than our superficial differences. We can achieve together what we have been unable to achieve alone."
The findings she presented, that HIV-positive men who have sex with men (MSM) who were virally suppressed had zero risk of transmitting HIV to their partners, provided the most definitive conclusion yet that antiretroviral treatment is an extremely powerful tool in preventing HIV transmission -- and that the concept of U=U (undetectable equals untransmittable) can be applied just as reliably to gay men as to heterosexuals.
For people in recovery, addiction-related stigma can insert itself into all manner of restrictions years into the recovery process. Here is an illustration of such a restriction when Shiv Sharma, a member of the Board of SMART Recovery International (SRI), requested a visa to travel to the SRI board annual meeting in the U.S. (His letter to me is shared here with his permission.)
Before his life was so senselessly taken during the recent anti-Semitic terrorist act at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, Jerry Rabinowitz, M.D., spent much of it caring for people living with HIV.
Caregiving is a valuable position in our community which often goes unrecognized. Let's look at what National Family Caregivers Month is and how you can celebrate it.
A former baseball player, Alan Charles reveals how he became addicted to drugs, his journey to recovery, and why addiction can happen to anyone—even those in our society who we perceive as the happiest, richest, and most successful.
TheBody asked participants what they had found to be the most important aspect of their own trans health care journey. Here's what they said.
The Well Project is pleased to present "HIV Criminalization and Women: A Roundtable Conversation with Survivors" on Tuesday, October 30, 2018 from 8 am - 9:30 am AKT. This important webinar will open with a presentation on what you need to know about HIV criminalization by Carrie Foote, PhD, with the HIV Modernization Movement–Indiana. It will also include a roundtable discussion with women who have experienced the effects of criminalization firsthand.
Congress approved the Opioid Crisis Response Act of 2018, legislation that will now allow Medicaid to pay for residential treatment in large facilities and Medicare to pay for methadone treatment. It will also provide funding for research into opioid alternatives, support greater use of non-opioid pain management and invest in new law enforcement efforts to curb illicit drugs.
Addiction Professional blogger Michael Weiner discusses how a case manager builds a therapeutic alliance with a patient in early stages of change.
Learn about the lifecycle of HIV and understand how different HIV drugs work to stop the virus.
The Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act is a federal law meant to prevent group health plans and health insurers that provide mental health or substance use disorder (MH/SUD) benefits from imposing less favorable benefit limitations on those benefits than on medical/surgical benefits.
Eight people living with HIV weigh in on an antiretroviral regimen that's likely on its way.
Thanks to the work of addiction medicine professionals across the country, coalition partners, the voices of patients and their families, and people in recovery, this legislation includes key provisions to strengthen our addiction treatment workforce, provide standardized, evidence-based treatment for substance use disorder, and ensure healthcare coverage and payment models facilitate coordinated, comprehensive care for patients. Read a statement from ASAM to learn more about the specific provisions in this historic agreement.
