AIDS Information: Helping kids make healthy choices"When
young people are safer and
healthier, the community is safer and healthier
By Rosemary Thomas, program manager, AIDS Information Duluth
We don't see stories in the
news very often anymore about HIV/AIDS, except when the news is about
people in other countries facing this disease. What about here in the U.S?
Or even in Minnesota?
"Unfortunately, people in this
country view HIV/AIDS as a manageable disease, and not a big deal,"
explained Rosemary Thomas, program manager with LSS' AIDS Information
Duluth. "People believe that if they get the disease, they can just take a
pill."
Wrong. Only 50% of people with
HIV/AIDS can tolerate medication for the disease, Thomas says. Moreover,
the medication can't cure the disease, only help people live longer by
slowing down the destruction that the virus is able to cause.
Rosemary Thomas knows.
Thomas is a Price Fellow with
the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta and just completed rigorous
academic research and study around issues of HIV/AIDS. Armed with proven
strategies and the latest information, she makes the rounds in Duluth's
soup kitchens and homeless shelters to help educate those most at risk for
contracting the deadly virus, and delivers over 100 educational
presentations annually to youth and adults in schools, social service
organizations, and community groups.
One innovative strategy she
brought back with her from Atlanta is called Street Smart, a
prevention/education project specifically designed for street-involved and
at-risk youth that has two goals in mind:
The project uses small group
discussion, media, creative materials and strategies to teach and inspire
kids. More than 60 young people have already completed the eight-session
experience.
"We want to equip young people
who are street-involved and already sexually active with basic
information, strategies to keep themselves safe and hope for their future
at a time when they often think that their life doesn't matter," Thomas
said. "So often, these kids have such battered self-esteem. But the good
thing about self-esteem…it's reparable."
What may be surprising is that
girls, ages 16 to 24, represent the fastest-growing group to contract the
disease in northeastern Minnesota. The sad reality is that two thirds of
those who contract the virus receive it from someone who doesn't know that
they have it. The good news is that young people can now walk in and get
tested for the virus at the new Wellness Center in Duluth, a project of
LSS and the University of Minnesota, Duluth, a free clinic for homeless
and at-risk youth that is staffed by medical professionals.
While AIDS Information Duluth
aims to save lives, the project also saves money. Thomas estimates that
medications for HIV/AIDS costs $12,000-15,000 a year per person that comes
out of private or public health insurance programs.
Thomas's work in Duluth is a
long way from her life as a migrant worker in the 1980s in New York. Since
then, she has graduated from prestigious Cornell University in Ithaca, New
York, and dedicated her life to HIV/AIDS prevention and education. Why
HIV/AIDS? Her brother, a prominent businessman with a wife and family,
died of AIDS in 1990. Thomas said that she doesn't know how he contracted
the disease. "Because of who he was, no one thought to test him. At that
time, we didn't know how to protect ourselves from the virus. Now we do."
"It's really exciting for me
to do work that I feel passionate about," Thomas says. "It's important
work that really matters."
