Author Archive: Jim Merrell
Jim Merrell is the National Coalition Development Coordinator at the AIDS Foundation of Chicago. In this role, he co-coordinates the HIV Prevention Justice Alliance. Find out more at www.preventionjustice.org.
Behind the Miracle Cure a Broken System Lurks
By Jim Merrell, HIV PJA ATLANTA, GA – The stories we tell ourselves about the world we live in matter. While we celebrate this week’s story of an HIV miracle cure, let’s not forget the story of injustice that made it possible. There have been a lot of stories about this week’s “Mississippi Miracle” – [...]
HIV is not a crime: Help Us End HIV Criminalization
HIV is not a crime. But according to our allies at the Positive Justice Project, most states continue to unfairly single out and target people living with HIV for criminal prosecution. This practice of ‘HIV criminalization’ is a relic of the fear-based public policy response of the early HIV epidemic. We believe it is time [...]
New CDC Factsheet: Treatment as Prevention
This new CDC factsheet on treatment as prevention posted two weeks ago seems to have slipped passed our radar! Check it out: www.cdc.gov/hiv/topics/treatment/resources/factsheets/tap.htm Interesting to note the explicit mention of health care reform implementation and increased resources for ADAP as important structural elements of successful combination prevention, a point that was reiterated later in the [...]
New Year, New Incidence Numbers: What can 2010 tell us about 2013?
Last month, the nation’s top public health agency, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), released an updated estimate of the number of new HIV infections occurring annually in the United States. Because of the difficulty in collecting the data necessary to make these estimates, we are only now getting information on new [...]
The Post-Election Question: Share Your Thoughts
With the dust of the November 6 election beginning to settle across the country, millions of us have now turned our attention to ponder a single, deceptively simple question: What do the election results mean for our efforts? The answer to that question differs for the distinct, interrelated pieces of the HIV prevention justice puzzle. [...]
