News & Events

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.

The number of older women living with HIV is growing. Read about aging with HIV, aging-related health challenges, stigma and support, and more.

Sunday's Recovery 5K Walk & Run sponsored by Turning Point Counseling Services and IAA's Community Liaison Becca Brado were featured on CBS News 13 last night! One correction: studies show that people in recovery take fewer sick days than the general population. Recovery is good for our community!

IAA's Interior Medication Assisted Treatment teamed up with Fairbanks Wellness Court to celebrate recovery on Sunday, September 16th with a cookout and 5-kilometer walk.

View a video presentation of the National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) data findings by Assistant Secretary for Mental Health and Substance Use, Dr. Elinore F. McCance-Katz, MD, PhD.

Helping HIV-infected drug users navigate the healthcare system leads to improved engagement and treatment adherence, a new study suggests.

At a time when the U.S. government is trying to deal with a nationwide opioid epidemic, many jails across the country are only now rolling out medicines to help inmates overcome addiction. And most of those jails dispense only one of the drugs currently available. Nearly 1 in 5 jail and prison inmates regularly used heroin or opioids before being incarcerated, making jails a logical entry point for intervention, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.

People on methadone maintenance treatment spent less time with a detectable viral load above 1500 copies/ml, potentially reducing the risk of HIV transmission, a study presented at the conference has found.

Learn how to read the package insert that comes with your HIV drugs, what information is in it, and how you can use that information.

New results are raising hopes for easing one challenge of living with HIV: the need to take daily pills for life, both to ward off AIDS and to lower the risk of transmitting the virus to others. Now, a large-scale study has shown over 48 weeks that monthly injections of two long-acting anti-HIV drugs work just as well as taking daily pills.

US drug overdose deaths surged to nearly 72,000 last year, as addicts increasingly turn to extremely powerful synthetic opioid fentanyl as the supply of prescription painkillers has tightened.

Pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) was initially approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in July 2012 due to its exceptional ability to prevent new HIV acquisitions.

Addiction disrupts all areas of your life, and sleep is no exception. According to one estimate, individuals with addiction are 5 to 10 times more likely to have co-morbid sleep disorders.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued new scientific recommendations aimed at encouraging more widespread innovation and development of novel medication-assisted treatment (MAT) drugs for the treatment of opioid use disorder (OUD).

It’s critical that policymakers, health systems and governments listen to the frustrated, burned out, mistrusting providers who refuse to treat addiction. Clinicians are wary of the 15-minute visit and buprenorphine script because they know that complex problems require complex solutions.

Substantial decreases in HIV diagnoses in key cities show the way to elimination of new HIV diagnoses in gay men, a workshop at the 22nd International AIDS Conference (AIDS 2018) in Amsterdam heard on Tuesday.

In contemplating Bourdain's suicide and her own battle with depression, Sherri Lewis writes, "I discovered that my problems were not about dying, but about how to live."

Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, has dubbed the over-prescription and abuse of painkillers the “public health crisis of our time” and said it will take a massive effort to combat the problem.

Conceptually, the Parity Act is quite simple: mental health and substance use health insurance benefits can be no less than medical and surgical benefits, when both types of benefits are offered in a health insurance plan. Yet, the road to implementation has been quite rocky.

While public health officials are expanding efforts to get pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) into the hands of those at risk, they are hitting roadblocks -- the drug's price tag, which has surged in recent years, and changes in insurance coverage.

Thirty years ago today I was handed a death sentence. At least that is what an HIV diagnosis meant in 1988. In fact, it meant so much more than just death. It meant shame. It meant stigma. It meant judgement and isolation.

The words we use have been shown by researchers to not only negatively influence our attitudes toward people in recovery and people who use substances — to the extent of suggesting that a health condition is a moral, social, or criminal issue — but they also impact access to health care and recovery outcomes.

Women are often under-represented in HIV research and always working to get a seat “at the table”. One way we can improve this is by taking surveys such as this one — which is to find out what we would be willing (or not willing) to do in order to participate in HIV cure research.