Archive for April, 2010
Dining Out For Life — One week from today!
Just a friendly reminder to attend the grand rapids Red project’s Dining Out For Life event next Thursday evening, April 29th. Six local restaurants are participating. Gaia, JB’s Pizza Parlor, Brick Road Pizza, Kopper Top, Jamaican Dave’s, and Brandywine. Restaurant information is on our poster to the right.
Thanks to Exact Graphics for our wonderful print materials, to our corporate sponsors, to our participating restaurants, to all the local businesses who are displaying our posters, and an advance thank you to everyone who attends! Let’s make this event a great one!
Join our Facebook event and invite all of your friends! Also click here (or on the poster) to go to our section on Dining Out For Life’s official website!
Advocate for Syringe Access in North Carolina
It is a right of any human being to have access to the knowledge and tools needed to stay healthy. For people who inject drugs one of these tools is a clean, sterile syringe. Syringe access programs help decrease incidence of HIV and hepatitis C, they take dirty syringes off the streets preventing accidental needle stick injuries, they act as a bridge to substance abuse treatment, and they help to address health disparities in a group of people that many do not want to admit exist. Syringe access programs do all this while not increasing drug use.
Clean Works is a syringe access program operating in the Grand Rapids area and serving our community for the past ten years. One significant barrier to people who use drugs staying healthy that we’ve noticed over these past ten years is that in the state of Michigan syringe access programs are not legal everywhere they are needed. We are very lucky to have the opportunity to legally exchange these tools of public health, sterile syringes, in Grand Rapids. If we are serious about helping people who use drugs stay healthy, we should advocate for legal syringe access programs statewide, anywhere they are needed.
It just so happens that the North Carolina Harm Reduction Coalition is doing just this in their state. Show you know that it is a human right for all people to have access to the knowledge and tools needed to stay healthy. Sign a petition to legalize syringe exchange programs in North Carolina.
Tell Your Senator to Support Comprehensive HIV/AIDS Funding
Take Action!
Support Comprehensive HIV/AIDS Funding
E-mail Your Senator Today!
Why: More than one million adults, children, and adolescents are living with HIV in the US. Fifty percent of people living with HIV do not have reliable access to care, and 21 percent are unaware of their HIV infection.
Meanwhile, many state and local governments are struggling to maintain their HIV/AIDS programs due to the current economic climate. If the federal government does not provide the requested levels of funding to stabilize prevention, treatment, and research programs, the results would be devastating. The situation is truly dire, as the rate of HIV infections in the United States remains steady at a staggering rate of 56,000 new cases per year.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention needs increased funding to continue its prevention efforts as much as the National Institutes of Health needs continued support for its ground breaking research.
Increased funds are needed to support the Ryan White Program, Housing Opportunities for People with AIDS, HIV testing, and comprehensive sex education along with many other programs working to improve prevention, early detection, and access to care.
Take Action: E-mail your Senator and encourage them to sign on to Senator Hagan and Gillibrand’s letter Supporting Comprehensive HIV/AIDS Funding by contacting Senator Hagan’s staff person, Michelle Adams, by Monday, April 12, 2010. The time to act is NOW!
Re-posted from: AIDS Action