Winter 2024
The Health Not Prisons Collective is an intersectional national initiative launched in 2020 by Counter Narrative Project (CNP), Positive Women’s Network – USA (PWN), Sero Project, Transgender Law Center (TLC), and the U.S. Caucus of People Living with HIV (the HIV Caucus) — longtime collaborators led by, and accountable to, communities most affected by HIV criminalization in the United States.
The Health Not Prisons Dispatch is a quarterly bulletin highlighting recent developments relevant to criminalization and policing of people living with HIV in the United States, along with upcoming events, relevant resources, and opportunities to get involved. For more information, email Elena Ferguson at hnp(at)pwn-usa.org.
Greetings readers,
As you may know, we lost a member of the Sero Project community, Cindy Stine, last week. The HNP Collective is heartbroken by Cindy’s passing. She was the Sero Project’s Development Director and a fierce advocate against HIV criminalization. Cindy always reminded us that connection is what’s truly important in this work and she strived to make those connections through programs like the Sero Holiday Card Project, which HNP partners and advocates participated in over the last few years. In their loving tribute to Cindy, which you can read in Poz Magazine, the Sero Project wrote, “Cindy was more than just a friend, co-worker, and advocate; she was a beacon of strength, compassion, and unwavering dedication. To everyone who had the privilege of knowing her, Cindy embodied kindness, resilience, and an unshakeable commitment to justice and equity for all, particularly for those who have been marginalized and overlooked by society.”
Cindy will be missed. This edition of the Health Not Prisons Dispatch is dedicated in her honor. We love you, Cindy and we are sending our deepest condolences to our colleagues at the Sero Project.
-Elena Ferguson, Health Not Prisons Collective Coordinator
❄️ Seasons Greetings ❄️
HNP has laughed, gathered, and advocated our way through another long year of working to decriminalize HIV. We are so proud of all of the accomplishments of our HNP partner organizations and Advocates. Stay tuned for an official recap of HNP’s work that will be released in January. In the meantime, we just want to thank all of the supporters of HNP! If you read an article we published, attended one of our webinars, or had a conversation with one of our Advocates, we are so grateful. We are wishing everyone a very happy holiday season and we’ll see you in 2025!
Collective Updates
HNP had a big presence at the United States Conference on HIV/AIDS (USCHA), one of the largest, annual HIV conferences in the country. Although some sessions were canceled due to Hurricane Helene, HNP partner organizations and Advocates facilitated a number of discussions on criminalization and surveillance, the experiences of lifetime survivors, and the meaningful involvement of women living with HIV within HIV decriminalization work. Several HNP partners also attended the pre-conference, Black in the South and held in-person meetings with federal officials.
HNP Partner Organization Spotlight
This quarter’s collective partner spotlight is on the Counter Narrative Project! Earlier this year, the CNP team embarked on a new social marketing campaign with the goal of reaching a million views across radio and digital platforms. The campaign, which ran from October 2023 to February 2024, was a rousing success garnering over 8.2 million impressions and over 41,000 clicks to the HNP website! The campaign was also nominated for a Radio Mercury Award. You can click the link to hear the audio of the radio ad of the campaign!
National Updates
On December 5th, the Office of National AIDS Policy (ONAP) hosted a Quality of Life Symposium for advocates. The symposium sought to address core aspects of quality of life for people living with HIV, including housing, employment and food security. HNP Partners were strongly represented during the symposium, including the US PLHIV Caucus, the Sero Project and PWN. This symposium would not have been possible without the tireless work of the Caucus to uplift the importance of not solely measuring the state of the HIV epidemic with biomedical markers, but instead addressing the whole person and quality of life of people living with HIV.
The December 2024 President’s Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS (PACHA) meeting was hosted in Montgomery, Alabama and HNP Partner organizations, including TLC and members from PWN’s Alabama chapter, participated in person. PWN-AL Outreach Coordinator, Myra Franks gave public comment and spoke about the dangers of HIV criminalization and how it reinforces stigma for women living with HIV.
Save the Date for HIV is Not a Crime Awareness Day on February 28th! Keep an eye on HNP social media pages for more info on activities planned in recognition of the day.
Save the Date for the 6th annual HIV is Not a Crime Training Academy! It will be held May 31 - June 3, 2025 at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, NC!
Decriminalization Efforts at the State Level
Many state legislative sessions across the country will be kicking off in January. HNP will once again be tracking relevant legislation related to HIV and sex work decriminalization. If you or the state HIV decriminalization coalition that you are a part of are pushing any pieces of relevant legislation, please reach out to me (elena@pwn-usa.org) and I can add it to our tracker. Please stay tuned for 2025-2026 Bill Tracker and while we wait for new bills to be filed, check out the bills we tracked last year.
The Williams Institute has been instrumental in providing comprehensive research around HIV criminalization across the country. Check out their latest in a series of HIV criminalization reports on Indiana: Evaluation of Transmission Risk and Donation Laws.
HNP Advocates' Corner
Welcome to a new section of the HNP Dispatch! For those readers who’ve followed the Collective for a while, you’ll know that we have an HNP Advocates Project. This section of the newsletter highlights just some of the achievements and activities of our current HNP Advocate cohort.
🔥 This fall, our HNP Advocates sharpened their public speaking and facilitation skills. Lashanda Salinas, Kenya Moussa and Valerie Pinkston attended USCHA in New Orleans, giving presentations on HIV criminalization and housing.
🔥 HNP Advocate for Indiana, Kem Moore is soon to be a published author. Kem co-wrote and submitted an article, “Unlocking Success: Community Engagement for Enhanced HIV Care Outcomes," for the academic journal, Research Involvement and Engagement. The article will be published soon. Congrats Kem!
🔥 Finally, our HNP Advocate in Pennsylvania, Kenya Moussa, played an integral role in the PWN Pennsylvania’s 2024 Voter Engagement campaign, which focused on educating voters about drug use criminalization and the necessity of harm reduction practices. During the campaign, Kenya served as a communications fellow and documented the journey of the campaign on social media!
Global News
In mid-September, an Austrian woman was convicted of fatally transmitting COVID-19 to her elderly neighbor. Authorities were able to trace the virus DNA and find a match with the defendant. Although this kind of pinpointing of transmission is scientifically impossible (at least for now) when it comes to HIV, this case does have dangerous implications for the surveillance of people living with HIV via practices like molecular HIV surveillance. To learn more about the court case, You can read more in The Independent here.
In early December, Belgium lawmakers voted to give sex workers the same rights as any other employee. In the wake of this decision, sex workers will gain legal protection and rights such as maternity leave or pension rights. To learn more about this historic decision, check out the latest in The Guardian.
Resources from the Field
Watch/Listen
Check out Lashanda Salinas, the HNP Advocate in Tennessee, in the latest video for Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation’s series True (Not Crime) Story on their YouTube channel.
For those who are seeking a dynamic podcast that examines the political shift towards facism in the U.S. and how our movements can counteract that, check out the latest podcast series from Convergence Magazine. You can find the Block and Build Podcast wherever you get your podcasts.
Read
Molecular HIV surveillance (MHS) continues to threaten lives, privacy, and dignity of people living with HIV across the country. To learn more about MHS, check out the new MHS explainer from the Center for HIV Law and Policy.
Did you know that people living with HIV are 2-3x more likely to get Long COVID? For more resources on the impact of COVID on people living with HIV and to find support networks, check out the work of Long COVID Justice.