Sisterhood is Power

That was the chant of the night. I just spent the last four hours with the women of Sister Act in Washington, D.C. It was their graduation. Sister Act is an intergenerational sexual health program run by the Women's Collective. I was filming their oral histories for their graduation as a memory to the HIV positive and negative women that came together to find strength, knowledge and power.

My mother insisted I bring her which was an extra special treat. She sat and listened as the women told me their stories. At the end of the evening, she turned around and said... "you know... women's lives are heavy." The translation in Amharic is more potent, but I think you get the point. My mother witnessed the singing, dancing, sharing and crying with a bit of awe and intrigue. She has always wanted to understand what I do better. I think she finally got it. Sisterhood is powerful.

Finally!

After working with women for the last 12 years, I have finally turned my attention towards men. This week TruthAIDS kicked off it's second Philadelphia community partnership with the E3 center targeting young African American men as part of a Fatherhood mentorship program. The program was a direct result of an HIV prevention outreach session conducted in February where a group of young men asked us to help them mobilize about the health problems facing them, namely violence. The Fatherhood program will run weekly and has 22 participants. The first session was discussing violence and the young men had plenty to say.

Listening quietly, I heard a voice I rarely see in the clinic. Due to biology, women start health screenings early with PAP smears, contraception and pregnancy. But young men, rarely, if ever, come in to see the doctor. This makes them a hard group to reach. Yet, the work that TruthAIDS has done with gender equity and HIV prevention makes it clear that their voice has a formative role to play. So, I have been waiting to find male TruthAIDS allies to help carry this work forward and am thrilled to have found David Johnson at the E3 center. His commitment, enthusiasm, and principles insure that this new partnership is a match made for success. I have a lot to learn, but am hopeful with time the lessons will lay out a path to follow.

Young Black Men

After years of working with women, my attention has recently turned towards men. I came to Philadelphia with this wish but wasn't sure how it was going to materialize. Well... they found me. I was developing a TruthAIDS community-based partnership with a local HIV prevention project called PALMS when it happened. I strongly believe HIV prevention programs should run through or be partnered with community development organizations. PALMS operates with this model.

The PALMS acronym stands for the Prevention of AIDS through Live Movement and Sound and is a project run out of the Philadelphia Health Management Corporation. This project uses actors to perform role plays to at-risk youth as a method of delivering HIV prevention education. The actors are amazing and the community health educators are wonderfully charismatic but the program has recently gotten some of its funding cut. That's when I came along. After witnessing their work first hand, I was so impressed with the effect they had on the youth they were teaching and believed in the potential of this small community-based programs.

One of the frustrating realities about HIV prevention is that there are so many great programs that stay small. We need to find ways to help scale these existing projects up so they can begin to build a movement of change. I have been working with PALMS to see how a physician partnering up alongside an existing community-based program can begin to address this issue of scale-up. I have been recently incorporated into their interventions as an official collaborator, offering my knowledge as a physician during their interventions with the youth and helping out with testing and counseling if needed. I have also brought a film crew to tape them to see how media can serve to bolster the scale up efforts.

The partnership is working lovely and is serving as a stepping stone for how the different silos of HIV prevention can be brought together. Fortuitously, PALMS runs their interventions in single gender groups because of the tricky topics of love, sex, violence, and power that the role plays reflect. This has provided me with the chance to work with young black men. As I listen to their stories, I can't help but reflect on my own brother's who lives in Washington D.C. The violence in communities like Philadelphia and Washington D.C. leave a lot for a sister to worry about. The families are under attack.

Sundays with David

Thank you for my problems. That was the lesson today with David. He took me to the church where he was raised so I could understand his sense of home. He introduced me to everybody as his documentarian but I felt like he should be introducing me as his student. I am learning volumes about how to live with light despite darkness. I knew when I met him that he was going to help me in ways that I didn't quite understand and I was right. Telling his story is changing me. That's where healing lies I think- in the exchange.

The Left Forum

Presenting with Dr. Bob Fullilove and Dr. Rodrick Wallace on HIV prevention was the highlight of the month. Dr. Wallace broke down the history of the epidemic as told through the lense of marginalized communities world wide and Dr. Fullilove made a call for community action. I presented the TruthAIDS work from Philadelphia and Los Angeles collaborators using video. The multimedia format was tricky as I have never be technologically literate but I think the visual medium continues to be a powerful way to teach about HIV. The panel attendees got a chance to meet the wonderful young men I am working with in Philadelphia as well as the talents of Shea Scott in L.A. It's wondrous when life allows you to bring all your circles together as one.