Posts Tagged ‘Science’

Positive Efforts for AIDS in Montana

Posted by

MontanaI'll admit it. I'm a city boy. I escaped suburban Central Florida for Chicago (and the occasional trips to New York). The luxuries of a major metropolitan city are endless — from food to fashion, from hot night spots to leading healthcare. But not every city or state for that matter has a Boystown or Hell's Kitchen, and many gays and lesbians in these areas face exponentially more stigmas and problems than their urban counterparts.

Montana used to just be that big, almost rectangular rural state near Canada with no connection to me. That is until I met my roommate and best friend, whose family lives in the Treasure State. Suddenly, I'm connected and notice articles like Monday's story in the Billings Gazette about gays and HIV.

On Oct. 1, Montana enacted a state law that physicians and health care officials must offer an HIV test to all patients, regardless of gender, race or sexual orientation, in an effort to address the upward trend of AIDS, HIV and hepatitis C cases in the state over the past 20 years. So far this year, there's been 27 new HIV cases. The most frequent mode of exposure to HIV and AIDS is men who have sex with men.

Read more »

| October 14th, 2009 No Comments »
Tags: · · ·

Discussions & Diseases

Posted by

AIDS "A lot has changed since I announced. We now have a major problem in urban America, in inner cities — the face of AIDS has changed from a gay white man's disease to a black and Latino disease. And if we don't get the black church involved, there is no way we bring these numbers down."

Magic Johnson, speaking at the 2009 National HIV Prevention Conference in Atlanta yesterday, couldn't be more correct — from his perspective and mine. Saddened by his announcement in the early nineties, the young boy that was me – who at the times saw HIV/AIDS as a distant issue never affecting my life — has since grown acutely aware of how pervasive and undersupported this issue is, both domestically and globally.

Read more »

| August 25th, 2009 No Comments »
Tags: · · · · ·

Familial Acceptance Fights Depression, Suicide

Posted by

Depression A recent study by San Francisco State University, whose findings will appear in January’s edition of the American Academy of Pediatrics journal, has established for the first time a link between serious LGBT youth health problems and their family’s rejection or other specific negative reactions to the youth’s sexual orientation. While the general results seemed somewhat intuitive as I read over the study’s media coverage today, the harsh realities of the findings and dialogue on this issue were somewhat unsettling.

Director of the Family Acceptance Project Dr. Caitlin Ryan and her team found that LGBT young people who had experienced greater rejection by their families were:

  • 8.4 times more likely to attempt suicide
  • 6 times more likely to become depressed
  • 3.4 times more likely to use drugs
  • 3.4 times more likely to engage in unprotected sex

Those numbers give pause when considered in context with the fact that more and more LGBT individuals today are coming out at earlier ages. And despite the growing number of LGBT role models and discussion of top LGBT issues at the national and local levels, conversations on the health of LGBT teens before, during and after their coming out are largely relegated to the occasional media story or study issued around the time of an LGBT teen’s death.

Read more »

| December 29th, 2008 1 Comment »
Tags: · · ·

Newer Entries »