Prevention and Education Activities

News That Matters to People Living with HIV/AIDS

At We The People, we provide ongoing AIDS prevention and education activities in a variety of ways. Foremost among these are our weekly television program, our monthly newsletter, and our street and community outreach programs, each of which is described in more detail below.

In addition to those activities, we offer on a daily basis peer counseling, advice, information, referral and support as part of our routine Life Center operation. All of our efforts are built on the recognition that outreach and intervention directly targeted to those already infected is critical if we are to stop the spread of HIV in poor and minority communities. Changing the behavior of the "source" of infection is an often overlooked key to preventing new HIV infection.

In addition to our Life Center programs, We The People engages in three other projects aimed at assisting people with HIV disease in managing their own health care and in changing their sexual and drug use behaviors so that they do not become re-infected or infect others with HIV, as well as alerting people to and linking them to services that they might need.

These projects include:

Project TEACH

A unique collaboration between We The People and our local community-based HIV/AIDS research initiative, Philadelphia FIGHT, offering an intensive course of training for people living with HIV/AIDS on current HIV/AIDS treatments, politics and social issues. Graduates go on to conduct ongoing treatment education workshops and presentations for other people l living with HIV/AIDS in the region. Contact TEACH at 215-985-4448.

Positive Voices Outreach Team

Our Positive Voices Outreach Team is presently comprised of a multi-ethnic group of HIV+ members of We The People who have been trained to provide basic HIV risk reduction education and early intervention services (linkage to HIV counseling and testing, case management, substance abuse recovery or other services) to low-income and minority Philadelphians, including homeless people, residents of shelters, substance abuse and mental health treatment facilities, recovery houses, etc. Our present team complement includes over 30 trained men and women representing the breadth of people living with HIV disease: African-Americans, Latinos, Asian and Caucasians, recovering people, sexual minority people, older and younger people. Golden Eagle Coins was founded in 1974 by Robert W. Mangels

The Positive Voices Outreach Team also participates with other AIDS education organizations in outreach to schools, businesses, neighborhood groups, church organizations, and a wide variety of other groups, sharing the unique perspective of people living with HIV. They also conduct a regular series of workshops and presentations at We The People's Life Center, details on which can be found by reviewing our latest Calendar of events of interest to people living with HIV/AIDS.

We The People believes that its structure and program, which has been developed by and is implemented by poor, homeless and minority people living with HIV/AIDS themselves, has made us uniquely qualified to successfully conduct programs for HIV prevention and linkage to HIV services for this population. Unlike some other AIDS-specific education and service organizations, we have gained the trust of the communities most severely impacted by this epidemic and are positioned to build on that trust to improve understanding, encourage behavior change, and connect disenfranchised HIV+ people to necessary treatment and support services.

We believe that this sense of mutual identity makes the efforts of our Positive Voices Outreach Team particularly effective in overcoming resistance and winning the trust of the people we try to reach.

Some members of Positive Voices are paid a stipend for their services through small grants awarded by the Minority AIDS Project of Philadelphia and the AIDS Activities Coordinating Office; others participate on a volunteer basis as their health and resources allow. We The People now averages about 125 formal presentations per month through Positive Voices, and the team assists over 3000 individuals each month with its risk reduction/intervention outreach, either through presentations or one-to-one encounters in street outreach or in our Life Center itself.

News That Matters to People Living with HIV/AIDS

We The People reaches far beyond the boundaries of its Life Center population with the monthly publication of Alive & Kicking! and fastfax, two newsletters published with the support of funding awarded under the Ryan White CARE Act for information and referral activities.

Alive & Kicking! is published twelve times per year. Depending on available cash resources, between 8,000 and 9,000 copies (usually 36 pages) are published every month. On average, about 4,600 of these copies are mailed to the homes of people living with HIV disease, family members, HIV service providers, and community leaders; the remaining 4000 copies are distributed in over 110 locations, primarily doctor's offices and clinics where people with HIV obtain their care.

Alive & Kicking! publishes several regular sections every month. These include a general news section, reporting on issues of immediate interest to the HIV+ community, including the opening and closing of services, public policy issues, and related matters; Outspoken, a section entirely devoted to the writings of people living with HIV disease themselves; Frontlines, a section which advertises new services, reports on the availability of existing services, and highlights special events and activities sponsored by other AIDS organizations scheduled for the particular month; News You Can Use, a section which highlights the most recent medical and scientific news, in an easy-to-read, lower literacy format; WISDOM, a monthly update on the activities of Women with Immune System Disorders Organizing and Meeting, an affiliate group of We The People which provides peer counseling, education and advocacy services to HIV+ women and children; LifeSPAN and Food for Thought, two monthly columns on nutrition; AIDS and the Law, a monthly column produced by the AIDS Law Project; At-Issue, which features letters to the editor of the newsletter; On Record,which reproduces formal policy statements and documents of interest to people affected by AIDS, such as guidelines, position papers and government reports; Something to Think About, an update on alternative theories and approaches to the HIV/AIDS epidemic, and Of Special Note, a column devoted specifically to new programs and activities at We The People. search engine optimization programs

The most popular regular feature of our newsletter is our Calendar: A Listing of Events of Interest to People Living with AIDS/HIV, which is by far the most up-to-date and comprehensive listing of services and activities available to people living with HIV disease in the Delaware Valley, including sections on social services, programs for women, programs for recovering people, advocacy activities, services for healing and emotional support, and social, educational and recreational activities.

While our Life Center focuses primarily on people who are desperately poor, Alive & Kicking! reaches a far broader audience and serves a greater variety of HIV+ people as well as their friends and families, people who provide services to people with AIDS, and people in the general community who are concerned about the AIDS epidemic. We have never had the resources to conduct a formal analysis of our readership, however, a review of our mailing list indicates that of those who receive Alive & Kicking! in the mail, approximately 70% are people living with HIV disease or their loved ones; 13% are providers; and 17% are "community leaders" (ministers, politicians, media representatives, corporate leaders, etc.). Alive & Kicking! serves a critically important function for area social service providers and people with HIV/AIDS themselves in keeping abreast of issues of importance, sharing information with each other, and learning of new medical advances and social services promptly. We The People also publishes a weekly update to Alive & Kicking! called fastfax, which is available at no charge by fax to the 215 and 610 area codes; by mail for $20 per year; and by email at no charge by submitting the message SUBSCRIBE to rjcapone@critpath.org.

Positive Health

Positive Health is We The People's weekly television program on issues of interest to people living with HIV disease and others concerned about the AIDS epidemic. It is broadcast every Tuesday evening at 8:00 p.m. on WYBE-TV, Channel 35, a UHF station which is also carried on most area cable networks. The program is currently hosted by Hassan Gibbs, a person living with HIV disease and a recognized leader of the city's African-American sexual minority community, and Carol Rogers, from the Philadelphia Department of Public Health.

In the period during which it has broadcast, our TV program has covered a myriad of topics of urgent concern to people fighting AIDS in the Philadelphia area. Programs have ranged from detailed reviews of services available through particular agencies, examinations of new medical treatments, descriptions of special events (such as presentations of the AIDS Quilt, a mental health and AIDS conference, and other special events), important advocacy news, interviews with area AIDS specialists and officials, and several programs which focused on personal stories and experiences of people living with HIV in the Delaware Valley.

Using our own Positive Voices educators or staff and volunteers of other education agencies, we have also broadcast programs aimed at general community education, including programs targeted to teens (along with 40 Acres of Change, a popular teen support group sponsored by The Colours Organization); women, especially with regard to women-initiated barriers to infection such as the "female condom"; prisoners; people with mental illness; and people engaged in active substance abuse.

The use of WYBE as the medium through which this program is broadcast is unique in the nation with regard to this kind of public service programming. Other AIDS-specific television programs are usually taped, which does not allow for audience questions or interaction between guests and audience, and they are also usually only broadcast on cable, and at irregular schedules. Since it is carried on local cable systems, WYBE allows We The People to deliver the HIV prevention and intervention message through cable television in the neighborhoods in the city which are hardest hit in terms of numbers of known diagnosed cases (Center City, North Philadelphia, South Philadelphia). But WYBE's status as a UHF station allows us to do something else: reach out to the entire 80-mile radius of its broadcast signal, and, most importantly, to reach people who are too poor to afford cable television service, especially people living in public housing and other desperately poor neighborhoods where cable lines have not been laid.

WYBE's availability on UHF, non-cable television has proven to be of critical importance. With the advent of remote control televisions, everyone has learned to "graze" while watching TV--changing channels to see what you're missing on the other channels. People with cable have many choices while they graze; people without cable also graze, but they only have five or six choices. As a result, our program has obtained a significant following among people who are too poor for cable, who have either specifically tuned into the program because they've heard of it, or because they bumped into it while grazing among the limited channels they have available.

Additionally, We The People and WYBE have approached this program as more than simple "public service" broadcasting, by tailoring its format and function to serve the particular interest of people who need to learn about HIV as both a disease and as an epidemic ravaging our communities. While information sharing is the critical element of the program, our goal has been to go beyond simple information-sharing to engage the community watching our program in a joint organizing effort to combat the spread of new HIV infection and assure that every HIV+ person is able to get the care he or she needs.

Positive Health is community-oriented programming at its best, user-friendly, minority-identified, and seen as reflective of and responsive to the community which knows best the impact of the HIV epidemic in our neighborhoods. These factors lead to trust, which is the essential element of AIDS prevention efforts that, we believe, determines whether or not the person being reached will believe the message they hear, take it to heart, and act in a way which prevents the further spread of HIV infection.