The National HIV/AIDS Strategy: A Milestone in the History of the Epidemic
By Guest Blogger Dan O’Neill
Member, DC HIV Prevention Community Planning Group
During his 2008 Presidential campaign, Barack Obama stated, “If elected, during my first year in office, I will develop and implement a comprehensive National HIV/AIDS Strategy (NHAS) that includes all federal agencies.” He continued, “That strategy will reduce HIV infections, increase access to care and reduce HIV-related health disparities.” But with still no word on the matter after the first 100 days of his presidency, advocates soon took to the streets to pressure Obama to make good on his promise.
Well, he has, with the July 14 release of the final strategy and implementation plan for tackling the domestic HIV/AIDS crisis. Although members of the HIV/AIDS community had much to celebrate on Tuesday, many remained frustrated that the plan took so long to pull together and fell so far short on adequately addressing some of the most urgent HIV/AIDS treatment and prevention needs that America now faces.
A year ago I sat across the table from Jeffrey Crowley (pictured here with President Obama in the Oval Office), the newly minted Director of the Office of National AIDS Policy (ONAP), charged with the daunting task of spearheading the creation of the National HIV/AIDS Strategy (NHAD). Crowley listened while my HIV Policy class presented him with our ideas on how we thought the plan should be structured.
At the time he was saddled with this tremendous responsibility, he was still sorely under-staffed at ONAP and already behind schedule according to many community advocates who had waited years for such a plan; so it’s a wonder that in just over a year he and his team were able to synthesize such a thorough and comprehensive strategy and implementation plan. And for rising to that challenge, they should be commended.
This undertaking marks the first successful attempt at such a national strategy, after previous failures and false starts. The most recent attempt under the Clinton administration failed to be implemented and went largely unnoticed by much of the community. As a result, this time around, Crowley was able to build on the lessons learned from the past as well as from the President’s Emergency Plan For AIDS Relief (PEPFAR). In particular, this time ONAP went into the community to ask the front-line advocates, service providers, and HIV-positive individuals their thoughts on what the strategy should include. Undoubtedly, this open-community process helped to establish the buy-in needed for this strategy to come to fruition and for people to actually pay attention to it.
Thus, having met a key “ask” of HIV/AIDS advocates during the 2008 presidential campaign by successfully raising the profile of HIV/AIDS on the national stage, the foundation to make some significant inroads into the fight against this epidemic has been laid, that is, assuming that we get the implementation right.
Please click inside to read Dan’s analysis of the National HIV/AIDS Strategy.
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Barack Obama, Dan O'Neill, Jeff Crowley, National HIV/AIDS Strategy