March is Educating Teens about HIV/AIDS Month, and March 2008 was wonderful! We received reports of great activities taking place throughout the Month of March, especially during the Balm in Gilead week of healing for the Black Churches.
ETAH was pleased to host our first conference on the Economic Impact of HIV/AIDS March 24-26th. We were pleased to see that many truly embraced our conference theme: “Putting our Future First: Reclaiming our Youth through Community Connections.” On Tuesday, March 25th we held a concurrent Teen HIV/AIDS Awareness Day which was well attended and much enjoyed by the teens. Highlights of the conference included:
Monday evening, March 24, 2008: Presentation by Christopher H. Bates, Acting Director for the Department of Health and Human Services’, Office of HIV/AIDS Policy. He encouraged us to continue our effort to involve everyone in prevention education to curtail the impact of HIV/AIDS.
Tuesday, March 25, 2008: Keynote Address by Dr. Calvin Johnson, Secretary of Health, Commonwealth of PA, his special message to the teenagers was well received. We are pleased that he supports our parent involvement efforts.
We were also pleased that Ms. Andrea Flynn, MAC AIDS Fund joined us to discussed the corporate role in prevention education, and Dr. Kim Miller, Centers for Disease Control, shared her research on Pre-risk approaches to HIV prevention for Youth.
Wednesday, March 26th, we were joined by an enthusiastic group of young adults from the Youth Empowerment Project and had a moving conference wrap-up session.
Check back for pictures and a chronicle of our trip to Capetown, South Africa with the DIVA foundation!
Tags: education, family, health, HIV/AIDS, life, parents, teens, youth
