Day Three

We began day three with a busy itinerary.

First stop: Project Inform

Project Inform is an informational portal and a great resource for HIV + patients. This nonprofit is policy driven and promotes activism within fields like the promotion of new medical strategies and quality health care. Dana Van Gorder, of the Board of Directors for the project, spoke to us about the mission and some of the strides of the organization. One concern that arises from conversation was that many of the HIV/AIDS services, especially those in San Francisco, seem to overlap in terms of service goals, consumers, and methods or split up due to political differences. During reflection, Sonja pointed out that this dispersion of resources, funds, and attention may have a detrimental effect on the programs' efficacy. Others reflected on the nature of service organizations and realized that this prevalence of scattered organizations is a ubiquitous problem in areas beyond HIV/AIDS.

After the enlightening talk from Dana, we were paired up and assigned a list of organizations to call in order to verify/update the contact information for Project Inform's database. None of us had much experiencing with telemarketing, so it was a new and thoroughly entertaining experience.

AIDS Legal Reference Panel

The legal panel was unanimously the highlight of our day. This assembly of highly professional lawyers originated during the onset of the AIDS epidemic and volunteered their time dealing with wills upon an AIDS patient's death. As the disease progressed and inflicted became more sustainable, their jobs evolved into a variety of legal issues from housing to insurance disputes. Apparently, some insurance companies engage in spying activity in order to release some recipients from their insurance policies. There was one instance of a company that spied on and captured evidence of one of its stakeholders pushing a lawn mower. This was used as evidence that this lawn mower was perfectly capable of working and thus is no longer dependent upon the insurance company's support. His policy was shortly terminated. Aside from dealing with these types of litigation, the company also works with HIV/AIDS inflicted foreigners who wish to gain political asylum within the states. Most of the clientele are persecuted, gay men who can show evidence of discrimination from their original countries. This topic spurred much discussion over reflection and invoked principles that generally surround the issue of immigration.

After the legal panel, we dispersed among the gossamer web of SF's downtown retail and restaurants and satisfied our respective needs. Especially notable is the King Thai restaurant where the quality of the food is good, the prices great, and the thai tea, free.

HIV Planning Council

The final activity of the day was sitting in on the HIV Planning Council of San Francisco that was open to public participation. This a monthly committee that consists of members of the community, usually volunteers involved with AIDS/HIV nonprofits or the "consumers" of such programs. The mission statement of the council is as follows: "The council determines the needs of this population, establishes priority for services and allocates funds from Part A of Ryan White Programs. For 2009 the funding amounted to over 26 million dollars for the three county area." As enthused as the majority of the group was over this public forum, we found it difficult to engage in the conversations that were going on. There was some debate among us over the efficiency of the meeting as well as its efficacy. We came to the conclusion that such organizations do bear the heavy burden of trying to be fair, efficient, and receptive to public opinion while executing the plans in a timely and financially savvy manner. There is definitely much to learn and explore in the field of AIDS/HIV public policy and planning.

We look forward what tomorrow has in store!

Links for future reference:
http://www.projectinform.org/
http://www.sfcarecouncil.org/

-Nicole Z.