Thanks for your patience! We had some technical difficulties but now are up and running. Here is the link to register for the 2011 Symposium:
https://hiv-aging.kimbia.com/haac-symposium
Save the Date! HIV/AIDS and Aging Symposium 2011!
Print flyer HAAC flyer here!
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Premature aging seen as issue for AIDS survivors
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Having survived the first and worst years of the AIDS epidemic, when he was losing three friends to the disease in a day and undergoing every primitive, toxic treatment that then existed, Peter Greene is grateful to be alive.
But a quarter-century after his own diagnosis, the former Mr. Gay Colorado, now 56, wrestles with vision impairment, bone density loss and other debilitating health problems he once assumed he wouldn’t grow old enough to see.
“I survived all the big things, but now there is a new host of things. Liver problems. Kidney disease. It’s like you are a 50-year-old in an 80-year-old body,” Greene, a San Francisco travel agent, said. “I’m just afraid that this is not, regardless of what my non-HIV positive friends say, the typical aging process.”
Even when AIDS still was almost always fatal, researchers predicted that people infected with HIV would be more prone to the cancers, neurological disorders and heart conditions that typically afflict the elderly. Thirty years after the first diagnoses, doctors are seeing these and other unanticipated signs of premature or “accelerated” aging in some long-term survivors.
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“What’s Up, Docs? Training Medical Students to Talk about Sex with Older Patients”
The Center for Family Life’s “Sexually Smarter” blog has some great information on all things sex, for all generations. This recent post highlights the importance of physicians talking with their older patients about sex… and some of this issues that go along with such discussions. -SP
Read the full article here at “Sexually Smarter” blog.
By Bill Taverner
“Sex Week” is the name of the educational program for medical students held the first week of January at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey (UMDNJ). The program was co-founded by Dr. Sandra Leiblum and Dr. Richard Cross almost 40 years ago, and prepares physicians about the importance of sexuality in the lives of their patients. At the conclusion of Sex Week every year, Dr. Cross made a tradition out of reading a passage from The Velveteen Rabbit, by Margery Williams.
“What is REAL?” asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender before Nana came to tidy the room. “Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?”
“Real isn’t how you are made,” said the Skin Horse. “It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but really loves you, then you become Real.”
“Does it hurt?” asked the Rabbit.
“Sometimes,” said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. “When you are Real, you don’t mind being hurt.”
“Does it happen all at once, like being wound up?” he asked, “or bit by bit?”
“It doesn’t happen all at once,” said the Skin Horse, “you become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easy, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”
This passage was appeared as a dedication to Dr. Cross in a sexuality education manual I co-authored, Older, Wiser, Sexually Smarter: 30 Sex Ed Lessons for Adults Only. (Brick, et al., 2009) It serves as an ideal introduction for addressing the importance of doctors talking about sex.
Like the Skin Horse, older adults might think of themselves as shabby. Certainly society reinforces the message that the sexuality of elders is not to be taken seriously. Witness the appearance of 90-year-old Betty White on “Saturday Night Live” discussing her “muffin” to the roars of audience laughter. The bit just doesn’t work if it is delivered by someone who is 30 or 40-something. But older folks? There’s so much “material” that our sex ed manual devoted an entire lesson on teaching with jokes. Here is one of my favorites, which I read for the medical students.
A doctor asked an 85 year old man for a sperm count as part of his annual exam. The doctor gave him a jar and said, “Take this jar home and bring back a semen sample tomorrow.”
The next day the man returned to the doctor’s office and gave him the jar – which was clean and empty. The doctor asked what happened, and the man explained, “Well, doc, it’s like this. First I tried with my right hand, but nothing. Then I tried with my left hand, but still nothing. Then I asked my wife for help. She tried with her right hand, then with her left, still nothing. She tried with her mouth, first with the teeth in, then with the teeth out, still nothing. We even called up Arleen, the lady next door, and she tried too – first with both hands, then an armpit, and she even tried squeezin’ it between her knees, but still nothing.”
The doctor was shocked, “You asked your neighbor?”
The doctor was shocked, “You asked your neighbor?”
“Yep! None of us could get the jar open.”
BET: “How to Talk to Grandma and Grandpa About HIV”
This is a great article by BET Health raising awareness of the growing number of African-American seniors diagnosed with HIV. Check out the many facts the dispel common myths about aging and HIV.-SP
With HIV transmission rates soaring among African-American seniors, it’s time for the young folks to intervene and educate.
By Kellee Terrell
Think about it. You grew up in a time when Rap It Up was said so often, it’s become part of our vernacular. Unfortunately, our grandparents, and even some of our parents, weren’t so lucky. The growing HIV/AIDS rates among seniors in the U.S. shows a serious disconnect: Paw-Paw doesn’t know what he needs to know about safer sex, condoms and getting an HIV test.According to Planned Parenthood Federation of America, baby boomers—people ages 44 to 64 years old—account for 27 percent of new HIV cases, and rising. And with an influx of older Black adults back in the dating game and being sexually active, it’s important for them to know that the game has seriously changed. Just because having babies is not on the horizon, that doesn’t mean protection is not needed. AIDS is everyone’s issue.
So this is where you step in. Our generation should be the knowledge brokers on HIV—yes, we have a lot to learn ourselves, but we are much savvier and more comfortable when talking about sex. At some point, we have to relay the right information to the loved ones who spent their lives raising us.
I recently came across an article from The Black AIDS Institute that deals with this same topic. In “Five HIV Facts You Need to Tell Your Parents and Other Elders,” writer LaShieka Purvis Hunter discusses the most important facts about HIV that the older folks in our lives need to know.
Here’s an excerpt of some of the facts:
STDs, including HIV, are rampant in Black America: Gone are the days when it was okay to have sex without a condom or knowing your partner’s STD (including HIV) status. Rates of HIV, as well as the incidence of chlamydia, gonorrhea and syphilis, are highest in our community.
What to tell your elders: Nice people get STDs, including HIV/AIDS; they don’t always have symptoms and you can’t tell who’s infected by looking at them. So talk to your partner about safer sex, get STD and HIV tested, and insist that a condom is used unless you have actually seen his or her test results and are certain that you are in a monogamous relationship. Err on the side of protecting your health.
HIV/AIDS is not a gay man’s disease: Black men and women represent only 13 percent of the population but account for 45 percent of new HIV infections; in addition, 64 percent of all women living with HIV/AIDS are Black.
What to tell your elders: In Black America, HIV/AIDS has spread beyond the historical high-risk groups and into the general population. According to a study by the Kaiser Family Foundation, heterosexual transmission and injection drug use account for a greater share of infections among Black men than among white men. Black women are also most likely to be infected through heterosexual transmission.
Condoms are not the enemy: Older men often shun condoms because they have more difficulty maintaining erections than younger men.
What to tell your elders: Instead of going without condoms, offer to accompany your partner to the doctor, who can help treat erectile dysfunction by prescribing medication, counseling or other treatments. Also explore the female condom, which “can be kept in place for vaginal or anal intercourse whether or not a man stays erect,” says ob-gyn Vanessa Cullins, M.D., M.P.H., M.B.A., the Planned Parenthood Federation of America’s vice president for medical affairs.
The key to being a knowledge broker on HIV is having the knowledge. To learn more about HIV/AIDS, go to the Centers for Disease Control or TheBody.com’s African –American HIV/AIDS Resource Center.
Full article at http://www.bet.com/news/health/how-to-talk-to-grandma-and-grandpa-about-hiv.html.html
