There will be a protest rally in Tampa on Thursday,
May 31 at Florida's Agency for Healthcare
Administration's (AHCA) Disease Management Summit.
The protest will be front of the Wyndham Westshore
Hotel (corner of W. Kennedy Bl. and Westshore) 4860
West Kennedy Bl, Tampa, Fl 33609, which is where AHCA
is holding its summit meeting. The secretary of AHCA,
Andrew Agwunobi, MD, will attend the disease
management summit. The protest will start at 9:00 a.m
and end at 11:00 a.m. If you can make it, please do.

Call 727-533-9000 if you want more information.

HIV/AIDS patients enrolled in the state's disease
management program will protest AHCA's decision to
dismantle the program, which has been providing good
quality medical care to HIV/AIDS patients statewide,
and saving the state millions in healthcare expenses.

AHCA wants to give the disease management program to a
new cut-rate, for-profit vendor who doesn't have
HIV/AIDS experience in Florida, nor doesn't have any
infrastructure to care for the patients in the
program. The new vendor also plans to run the program
with 1/3 of the staff that the current vendor has.
This can't be better for Florida's HIV/AIDS patients.
The vendor who has had the HIV/AIDS disease management
program since 1999 is AIDS Healthcare
Foundation/Positive Healthcare, a non-profit,
20-year-old organization that exclusively cares for
people living with HIV/AIDS.

It's time for AHCA and Governor Charlie Crist to hear
from Florida's citizens who are living with HIV/AIDS.
The citizens of Florida, especially those living with
HIV/AIDS, deserve better.

<momalley10@yahoo.com> wrote in message

Main Category: HIV / AIDS News
Article Date: 11 Sep 2006 - 1:00 PDT

Although there has been progress in recent years, blacks in south Florida are more than three
times as likely to be HIV-positive than whites in the region, according to a report from the
Florida Department of Health, the Miami Herald reports (Goldstein, Miami Herald, 9/7).

The report, titled "Silence is Death: The Crisis of HIV/AIDS in Florida's Black Communities,"
looks at 20 counties in the state with at least 600 reported HIV/AIDS cases ("Silence is Death:
The Crisis of HIV/AIDS in Florida's Black Communities," 9/5). HIV prevalence is six times as
high among blacks as whites in Florida, down from about 11 times as high in 1999, Spencer Lieb,
a senior state epidemiologist who co-authored the report, said. In Miami-Dade County, 2.3% of
blacks are HIV-positive, compared with 0.7% of whites and 0.6% of Latinos, the report says.

In Broward County, the figures are 1.7%, 0.5% and 0.5%, respectively (Miami Herald, 9/7). "It
is unacceptable that for 15 years in a row, HIV/AIDS has been the leading cause of death among
black Floridians aged 25 to 44 years," state health department Secretary M. Rony Francois said,
adding, "It is time for us to mobilize communities and all those who have a stake in the
epidemic to find innovative ways to reduce the associated morbidity and mortality."

The report makes recommendations for fighting HIV/AIDS among blacks in Florida -- including
raising awareness about the disease among blacks, promoting HIV testing, increasing access to
HIV prevention and care, encouraging communities and local governments to increase their
response to HIV/AIDS among blacks and initiating development of a plan to address the epidemic
(FDOH release, 9/5).

The Miami-Dade County Health Department has launched new efforts targeting black men who have
sex with men alongside current programs targeting the broader black community in the county,
Evelyn Ullah, who runs the department's HIV/AIDS program, said. In addition, the World AIDS Day
committee in Broward County plans to hold World AIDS Day events this year in a predominantly
black neighborhood that is home to the county's highest number of new HIV cases, according to
Jean Starkey, who chairs the committee (Miami Herald, 9/7).

"Reprinted with permission from http://www.kaisernetwork.org. You can view the entire Kaiser
Daily Health Policy Report, search the archives, or sign up for email delivery at
http://www.kaisernetwork.org/dailyreports/healthpolicy. The Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report
is published for kaisernetwork.org, a free service of The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation . ©
2005 Advisory Board Company and Kaiser Family Foundation. All rights reserved.