Message to Community Partners, Funders and Clients

On behalf of the Board of Directors of Voices of Positive Women I am writing to notify you that effective today, June 21st 2010, Voices of Positive Women will be closing. All staffing positions have been terminated and all programs and services that were provided by VOPW have ended.

Many of you may recall that I wrote to you this past March to ask for your assistance in participating in an independent Organizational Review. This Review was requested by the AIDS Bureau, our largest and most important funder and fully supported by the Board of Directors.

The findings of that review were shared with our Board of Directors in late May 2010 and we were advised by the AIDS Bureau that a decision had been made to stop funding Voices of Positive Women effective August 31, 2010.

Please know that this has not been an easy decision to make. Our Board of Directors has spent many hours discussing the AIDS Bureau decision and assessing the future viability of our organization without these funds. In the end we concluded that our organization was not sustainable.

To assist clients with this transition in services the following arrangements have been made: two staff persons from the Teresa Group will be available to help with individual assessment and referrals to appropriate service providers until the end of September 30, 2010. The number to call is: 416-596-7703. Collect calls will be accepted from individuals outside the GTA. Alternatively, clients can call the AIDS Hotline at 1-800-668-2437 (English, French and 16 other languages) or 416-392-2437 (local calls). Clients can also access www.ASO411.ca to locate the services closest to the area in which they live.

This is a difficult time for all of us; it is filled with sadness and loss. As a woman that has accessed services from VOPW, I can understand your personal sense of loss but also believe that this is the best decision for our clients, our community and women with HIV.

We will be planning a celebration of Voices of Positive Women’s accomplishments in the coming weeks. This organization has a proud and significant history and it is important that we have an opportunity to share our memories and stories together. We will be inviting clients, community partners and other stakeholders and hope you will join us.

You should also know that the AIDS Bureau has committed to protecting the current level of funding provided to Voices for future programs and services for HIV+ women. An advisory committee will be created to undertake planning regarding this shortly.

In closing, everyone at VOPW and the AIDS Bureau is saddened with this news. BUT, with the evolution of the advisory committee it is also a time for hope and reflection.

If you would like more information please do not hesitate to access our website at www.vopw.org or while the office remains open 416-324-8703.

On behalf of the Board of Directors, Voices of Positive Women,


Yours truly,

*******

*********

English Follows

Couples séro-différents

Tu vis une relation de couple « séro-différent » (une relation où l’un d’entre vous est séropositif et l’autre ne l’est pas ou ne connaît pas son statut sérologique) ?
Tu es en relation de couple avec un autre homme et tu viens d’apprendre que tu es séropositif ? Quand et comment lui dire ?
En tant que couple, vous cherchez des informations à propos du sécurisexe et des risques de transmission du VIH et des autres ITSS ?
Vous éprouvez des difficultés à l’intérieur de votre relation de couple en lien avec la séro-différence et vous aimeriez en parler ?

• Des consultations individuelles pour toi et/ou ton partenaire
• Des renseignements sur les risques de transmission du VIH et autres ITSS et l’importance de conserver un comportement sexuel sécuritaire à l’intérieur du couple
• Des rencontres d’information pour parler de votre réalité, votre mieux être, le dévoilement ou la vie de couple
• Du soutien et des références vers des ressources adaptées à vos besoins

Contacte-nous :

514-521-7778, poste 225 ou This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

[note from editor - I've included this as a guest post, written by the Ontario HIV Treatment Network, whose important study needs to get out there. If you fit the bill and are able to participate, please do!]

Thanks to improved medical care and better HIV medications, today many people with HIV are living longer and healthier lives. Many of us are employed or seeking meaningful employment. In doing so, we face challenges associated with living with HIV and finding jobs and workplaces that meet our needs and aspirations. But there is very little information about our employment needs. So the Ontario HIV Treatment Network is undertaking a research study to further our understanding of the ways in which our HIV disease, health and well-being (quality of life) affect our employment stability and labour force participation—and vice versa.

The Employment Change and Health Outcomes in HIV/AIDS (ECHO) research study is a community-based research study.  It will look at how employment (or lack of employment) affects the health of people living with HIV in Ontario and how the health of people living with HIV may affect their employment (or ability to find and stick with employment).  This study will provide much needed information for policymakers who are developing employment strategies for people with HIV.  It will also enable front-line service providers to use research information to better support people living with HIV.

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Funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), this community-based research study will engage with 600 HIV positive people for two years through a series of questions about their employment status and health.  The lead researchers of the study are Sean B. Rourke, Alan Li, Winston Husbands, Sergio Rueda, and Murray Jose. For more information about the lead researchers go to: www.ohtn.on.ca/Pages/About-Us/Our-Members.aspx.  James Watson and Melanie Mayoh of the Ontario HIV Treatment Network are jointly coordinating the study.  As part of the study, peer research assistants will work across Ontario in various front-line AIDS organizations, and meet face-to-face to interview people who have agreed to participate in the study.

We have already enrolled 300 unemployed people to participate in the study.  We are now looking to enroll employed people living with HIV.  If you are an employed person living with HIV, please consider participating in the ECHO study.  All Ontarians living with HIV who are over 18 years old are eligible.  If you are interested in knowing more about the ECHO study, or want to see if you are eligible to participate in the study, please call us toll-free at 1-866-332-2501.

I wrote this for Poziam, a social networking site for folks who are, well you know. Some of it maybe repetitive. I hadn't posted my colour assssement from the conference.

I really wanted to post while on the road from my Vienna/Budapest/Bratislava trip. My laptop had other plans for me as it chugged along at an ever-slowing pace. For me to accomplish one post with mostly photos it took me sometimes over an hour.

After that frustration I was toast.

My goal while at the AIDS 2010 conference was to cover updates on treatment guidelines, more importantly the discussion on when to start treatment. There are various viewpoints on what is being proposed, so I suggest if one is concerned about these issues to get all the information and discuss the pros and cons with your physicians.

It’s unfortunate that this issue has been tangled up in a thorny web of public health policy (treatment as prevention) vs. the individual’s choice and individualized treatment options. The two are not necessarily exclusive, however it does raise past fears and distrust of the medical establishment, and public health measures.

If that sounds cryptic, then do some research on what’s being said. It’s not really the post that I want to write. I’d rather give the overview of what I looked at.

To be frank, I simply focused on what I needed to do, and let the rest of it go. All the plenary sessions etc are available online and readily accessible to all.

For those who don’t know much about the ins and outs about treatment (and there is a lot to know), I can sum up the conference by saying the colour salmon is all the rage. Salmon is taking over, especially for more simplified treatment regimes, and less side effects. Ask your doctor about Salmon.

What I’m talking about is Raltegravir (Issentress), an integrase inhibitor. I’ve been taking it for a while now. I was nervous about it as I do not have a lot of options left. However, jabbing myself with a needle twice a day (Fusion aka T20) was taking its toll.

The salmon colour is much nicer than the florescent orange ones I have to take.

Offensive colours aside (I repeatedly tell the manufacturers that I have to run into the washroom, close the door and then turn the lights out in order to take my pills), these suckers do not give me the kind of side effects I’ve had back in my earlier pill-popping days.

Although I don’t really do that, I do jokingly tell them that. In case you are wondering what the two bright orange pills twice a day are, I’m talking about Duranivir, or Prezista.

Today, I take about 5 or 6 drugs without having to inject myself. To me that is a simplified drug regimen. I’m not so sure why people are so obsessed about a once a day pill.

So that’s my take home message from the conference in terms of drugs, “Think Salmon” I’m sure Merck, the manufacturer will thank me for that marketing idea.

Other than that, it was a debate over raising the thresholds to initiate treatment at a T4 count (CD4) of 350, or below, (there was consensus on this) also adding that a CD4 below 500 is the time to really start thinking about treating (this is controversial). The reason is that there really isn't such a thing as being asymptomatic. HIV is a disease of inflammation and there are many signals that over the long term this is very damaging, and treating earlier to combat this is better. Catch my interview with Melanie Thompson, chair of the IAS-USA treatment guideline panel part 1 here, and part 2 here..

For those who are inclined, "Vienna Intl AIDS Conference Thoughts from Jules Levin, NATAP" is a good little read for the Coles Notes on the conference.

The stuff about getting old is really depressing.

One hit and two near misses

I loved Dinner for Schmucks. I generally don’t like slapstick comedy. It relies too much on making fun of other people’s failings, weaknesses and disabilities. This movie does too but the “butts” of the jokes, so to speak, are corporate businessmen. No problem there.

The jokes are suitably silly and the gags hilarious. Steve Carrell is a very funny guy, no doubt. Just go and get your endorphins jiggling.

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Ramona and Beezus

The young girl who plays rambunctious Ramona is great. She is worth seeing the film. It is based on a children’s story and I am sure it is a faithful rendition. It is a tale that has many lessons for us worth remembering, however halfway through the film I started to feel a bit anxious and then downright uncomfortable. I realized that everyone in the film was white, straight, middle class and bright, except Ramona’s teacher Sandra Oh, who is straight ( I guess), middle class , bright and Asian. I don’t see how it would have been disloyal to the story to have black people,  gay people and disabled people in the film .  I came out feeling like I had eaten a whole loaf of Christie’s white bread.

I am love

I love Tilda Swinton. I love Italian films. I love forbidden romances and lesbian daughters . I love beautiful clothing, scenery and house. And I loved the first half of this movie. It had everything of beauty in it. Then something weird happened. It was like a new director took over part way.

I also loved the second half too but it seemed totally unrelated to the first half. The actors were the same but their characters had changed. Tilda Swinton inexplicably falls in love with a poor Italian with whom she has nothing in common but sex and food- okay, okay, that’s fine for awhile but not indefinitely. There is no foreplay ( what we straight folks call flirting) to make us believe in this attraction. Her son decides to leave the centuries old family business that has made them all rich to go into the restaurant business with her lover even though we have never seen any suggestion that her son can cook. He does eat but I don’t think that gives him the makings of a chef. I should know. I eat and can barely boil water. The well brought up daughter is mean to a young man who loves her just because she doesn’t love him. And the father sells the family business which, in the first half, he had promised his dying father he would never do.

The film doesn’t work even though I loved Tilda Swinton throughout so if you are a fan you should see it for her .If you love Italy see it for the ambience. Under no circumstances try to find credibility in the story.

Award-winning blogger Bob Leahy first made his social media mark a decade ago on LiveJournal.com where there are still to this day almost 3,000 entries of his available to be read. He was a featured blogger on Ontario’s HIVStigma.com campaign, along with PositiveLite.com publisher Brian Finch.  He joined PositiveLite.Com at its inception in 2009 and became it's Contributing Editor a year later.

Born in the UK, Bob’s background is in corporate banking, which he gladly left in 1994, after being diagnosed with HIV the previous year.  He has chaired the board of PARN (Peterborough AIDS Resource Network) and has been an executive board member of both the Ontario HIV Treatment Network  (OHTN) and the Canadian AIDS Society (CAS).  He was inducted in to the Ontario AIDS Network’s Honour Roll in 2005.  Bob is currently a member of Ontario’s GMSH (Gay Men’s Sexual Health Alliance). He also writes for TheBody.com.

In 2012, Bob was honoured with the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee medal for his work and commitment to HIV/AIDS in Canada.

Bob continues to write for this site while in the Positivelite.Com editor’s seat, with a particular interest  in HIV prevention, theatre and the arts in general. He is accredited media for a number of Toronto theatres. He lives in Warkworth, Ontario with his partner of thirty years and three dogs.