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GMHC RESPONDS TO 2016 ELECTION RESULTS
Call for Next President to Lead the National Fight to End AIDS
November 9, 2016 - New York, New York - GMHC released the following statement after the close of the 2016 presidential election. Back in January, the agency released the first HIV/AIDS survey to all presidential candidates running at the time and asked them to communicate their positions to the public on ending the epidemic. Hillary Clinton, Martin O'Malley and Bernie Sanders were the only candidates to respond. Their responses can be found here:
STATEMENBT BY GMHC CEO KELSEY LOUIE
We have finally come to the end of a long and grueling election cycle, which has dominated everything from social media and television news to conversations around the dinner table. What did not change after the results came in is that GMHC still has clients to serve this morning and we still have an AIDS epidemic on our hands. With Election Day behind us, the work of running a country must continue, which is why today, I call upon the President-elect to start leading on the critical, national fight to end the AIDS epidemic within the first year in office.
Some communities and regions are losing ground in the fight, with tragically increasing rates of new infections in the Southern United States, among young men who have sex with men, women of Trans experience, and within low-income communities of color. In the coming days, weeks, and months, GMHC will continue to fight and care for those living with and affected by HIV/AIDS, just as we have since this agency was founded in Larry Kramer's living room in 1981. We will continue to organize around modernization of the Ryan White Care Act, removing the ban on federal funding for syringe exchange programs, ensuring funding for comprehensive sexual health education, and addressing outdated HIV-criminalization laws across the United States.
As President Obama observed in his final State of the Union address, ‘we're on track to end the scourge of HIV/AIDS. That's within our grasp.' The next U.S. President has an urgent opportunity and responsibility to take historic action with a more aggressive response to the epidemic. In the coming months, we will push for the action, commitment and leadership needed to combat this public health crisis.
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About Gay Men's Health Crisis
Gay Men's Health Crisis (GMHC) is the nation's leading provider of HIV and AIDS care, prevention services and advocacy, serving nearly 10,000 people living with and affected by HIV and AIDS in New York City, the epicenter of the epidemic in the U.S. As the world's first HIV and AIDS service organization, GMHC is an expert in providing services that every person affected by the epidemic deserves. GMHC is on the front lines caring for people who are both HIV negative and positive, including: testing, nutrition, legal, mental health and education services. GMHC also advocates for stronger public policies at the local, state and federal level with the goal of ending AIDS as an epidemic in New York State by 2020. Most recently, GMHC and other HIV and AIDS organizations successfully persuaded the federal government to recommend widespread use of PrEP, a new daily treatment that is over 90% effective in preventing HIV infection. For more information, visit www.gmhc.org.
Contact:
Danielle Filson |646-335-0443| danielle.filson@berlinrosen.com
Source: GMHC
"Reproduced with permission - GMHC"
GMHC
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