Community programme rapporteur report

1. Community programmerapporteur report Presented By: Nycal Anthony-Townsend United States In Collaboration With: Garry Brough, C. Virginia Fields, Ernest Hopkins, Athena Moore

2. Community Programme Vision AIDS 2010 will create the space for community empowerment and engagement and will be an opportunity for people living with HIV (PLHIV) and affected communities to reclaim ownership of the HIV/AIDS agenda at all levels. The inclusion of positive health, dignity and HIV prevention is critical to increasing effectiveness and sustaining national strategies and local programmes.

3. Community Programme Approach

4. Community ProgrammeKey Findings and Results • Living with HIV • Collaborative multi-agency work is needed, which link PLHIV and Ageing Networks with comprehensive and appropriate medical, social and psychological care. Peer-driven support and education is considered essential, as was the need to make people aware of self-management strategies that can mitigate some of the harms caused by both ageing and HIV. • Human Rights • A framework advancing the integration of human rights protections into the global AIDS response should be the unifying call to action for the global community. A legislative policy and practice agenda should target eliminating inhumane conditions and must protect the rights of all people.

5. Community ProgrammeKey Finding and Results • Networking • Effective treatment, care, and prevention require collaboration between all stakeholders which enables the leveraging of resources, information, and advocacy. • Funding • Civil society organizations should see themselves as partners with governments who are mutually accountable to a transparent system. Communities can become involved through citizen report cards and social auditing.  • Organizations must engage with a range of people from key government agencies, budget analysts, research offices, treasuries, donors, etc.  Analyze reports on policies, performance, budgets and expenditures; conduct assessments; and participate in the budgeting process.

6. Community ProgrammeKey Findings and Results • Advocacy • There are key elements to all successful activism, that include factual information, clear message, targeted audience and expected outcome (s). • PLHIV over the age of 50 will represent a sizeable part of the community within the next few years . Communities should plan for an agenda of improving support and visibility for older adults with HIV.

7. Community ProgrammeKey Findings and Results • Advocacy • Increased options and access to new interventions and models of care for women must be developed. Various structural factors, such as gender inequality, economic security and public policy, continue to negatively impact women centered prevention • Homosexual behavior and individual homosexual orientation and identity are being legally criminalized and marginalized by cultural customs in countries around the world, exacerbating the social marginalization and stigma associated with HIV prevention efforts targeted to MSM and transgenders. Advocacy to eliminate these practices must be a call to action for all nations.

8. Community Programme Key Findings and Results • Collaboration with Governments • Communities can provide evidence to policy makers at the highest levels through formal and informal communication that punitive legislation is counterproductive to their goals of creating healthy societies. • Community Strengthening • Outreach to Faith leaders should occur in seminaries and schools, where they can be taught about these matters before being released in the world; messages of love, respect and compassion in response to HIV. • Community leadership should focuses on developing leadership skills and tools to influence research, engage with policy development and interact successfully with the media and key decision-makers.

9. Community Programme Key Findings and Results • Community-based Research • In rural Malawi, Task-Shifting in resource limited settings to improve access to HIV care and testing has been be proven effective. • In Mozambique, self-management and the development of expert patients to deliver ARVs to local self-formed groups improves retention and adherence and separate medical care and ARV provision. • In Western Kenya, “Low Risk Express Care” (LREC) demonstrated no Opportunistic Infections or history of adherence problems from switching patients who were stable on ART, with a CD4 count >200 from Doctor to Nurse-led care in two out of every three visits.

10. Conclusions and Recommendations • Communities should be afforded an opportunity through social networks to maintain a dialogue that would facilitate the application of evidence based models (e.g. Listserv, Webinars, Skype). • Valuable lessons can be learned from the creation of Global Community Connections and Peer Mentoring for professional development. • Universal advocacy on Human Rights issues must target marginalized communities so the voice of the world’s humanity is linked together. • PLHIV must have meaningful involvement within all areas of the process, throughout the entire life of policy advocacy and project implementation.