Looking back — Forward thinking

Today marks the first day of the new fiscal year for our programs. This is a time well suited to reflection on what we’ve accomplished and a look forward to the year ahead. So I would like to share with you some of my thoughts on the past, present, and future of our work.

But first, I want to thank everyone who has posted comments. I have read them all, and I very much appreciate your insight and creative thinking about how to address the multitude of challenges in our area of public health. Although I haven’t had the time to respond to specific comments, it is wonderful to see that the blog is serving as a place where everyone can directly speak to each other. I hope that you feel empowered to comment on each other’s contributions. I value your feedback and gain much from your observations, so please continue to post and comment as we continue to discuss HIV, hepatitis, STD and TB prevention.

So – back to the year we’ve had: We achieved tremendous success and responded to new challenges. We saw the lowest reports ever recorded for TB, and hepatitis A and B, while AIDS reports and AIDS deaths have remained relatively stable (For a review of HIV/AIDS, hepatitis, STD, and TB surveillance data, see the just released 2006 Disease Profile). However, disease data and new research methods have identified areas that remain a challenge. Specifically, the number of primary and secondary syphilis cases continue to increase, and new data highlighting the prevalence of STDs in young women and the incidence of HIV in the United States confirm that these diseases are more common than previously known.

Indications of turbulent times ahead for the U.S. and global economies may have far-reaching impacts on our health protection efforts. As people financially struggle in this environment, healthy behaviors may be less of a priority, and tightening budgets could herald a scaling down of some effective community prevention efforts. Now, more than ever, we will need to focus our prevention efforts on the highest health impact activities, as well as on those individuals without access to curative services, and those whose behaviors puts them at highest risk.

We must also focus on the opportunities that lay ahead. Recent congressional support for global HIV and TB prevention and the expanded national dialogue on HIV and STDs underscore the significant impact of these diseases on the health of those in the United States and around the world and the understanding that national and global health are intertwined. This increased support and growing dialogue around HIV, STD, TB, and viral hepatitis inspires me and I hope it inspires you too to come together to improve the effectiveness of our programs and use of our services.

In the next fiscal year, NCHHSTP will release new strategic plans and undertake programmatic efforts that will continue to accelerate our progress. We commit to completing a series of expert external reviews of our programs and to listening, engaging, and interacting with our partners and the public as we proceed. I will continue to blog about our progress.

As we start the new fiscal year, I ask for your input. What are your hopes for the year ahead, and what opportunities can we make the most of to support and accelerate our prevention efforts?

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"We commit to completing a series of expert external reviews of our programs and to listening, engaging, and interacting with our partners and the public as we proceed. I will continue to blog about our progress.”

Dear Dr. Fenton:

I applaud the sentiment to deepen federal agencies’ dialogue and planning with diverse local, state, and national stakeholders. The challenges we face are just too great to go it alone. I urge you to take extra-ordinary steps to involve community representations, especially people living with HIV/AIDS, in external review sessions, augmented by other means to garner our input. These investments will help build support for your programs and vision and give all of us working to battle HIV/AIDS much valued context in understanding your approaches. In the past, community advocates have been afforded just a few days notice—at best—before new CDC policy or data is released. As you can well appreciate, this is insufficient time to have any meaningful role in comprehending and/or supporting the newly released information, much less offering input.

Best,

David Ernesto Munar
Vice President, Policy & Communications
AIDS Foundation of Chicago
and Board President, National Association of People with AIDS (NAPWA)

Received from David Ernesto Munar, on Monday, October 20, 2008 at 12:35 pm ET
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Dr. Fenton,

I underscore some of the points made and hope that as we move forward, CDC will not continue to fund the “National” organizations who have forgotten about the “Local” need to work and stem the tide of this epidemic. While our politicians are showing why it’s not good to bail out Wall Street (i.e. big businesses), I want to also underscore why the CDC should continue to fund the fat cats without some clear examples and concrete plans on how their work will reduce HIV infection. We’re too far into this to allow organizations that have political ties to continue to be funded. I appeal to the CDC to strategically fund organizations in the new round of CBA dollars and insist that they show progress quarterly or risk being de-funded or experience reduced funding. I don’t think we can afford another 3 – 5 years of national failure with some of these projects.

LaMont “Montee Jamal” Evans,
Chief Executive Officer
Healthy Black Communities, Inc.

Received from LaMont Evans, on Thursday, October 2, 2008 at 4:22 pm ET
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