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On July 21, Whitman-Walker Health
(WWH) will host a forum on HIV/AIDS at George Washington University’s Lisner
Auditorium - the site where, 29 years ago, community members gathered for the
District’s first town-hall meeting on AIDS.
“It was a full house,” recalled D.C.
Council member Jim Graham (D-Ward 1), a former WWH president. “We all knew very
little about this disease, had very little knowledge of how it was
transmitted.”
Don Blanchon, executive director of
WWH, credits that first meeting’s call to action with jump-starting
Whitman-Walker and other AIDS groups. He noted that the July forum is timed to
coincide with AIDS 2012, the 19th International AIDS Conference being held in
Washington. Fifty-one local organizations are co-sponsors of WWH’s Lisner
gathering, and more than 200 people have registered to attend.
The event will feature a keynote
speech by Jeanne White-Ginder, mother of Ryan White; a performance by the Gay
Men’s Chorus of Washington; and remarks by Regan Hofmann, editor in chief of
POZ magazine; Phill Wilson, president and CEO of the Black AIDS Institute; and
José Zuniga, president of the International Association of Physicians in AIDS
Care.
“When I started dealing with this 29
years ago, I never thought we’d still be dealing with this,” said Graham, who
sees the upcoming meeting as “an opportunity to continue in the Lisner
tradition of providing solid information to fight the spread of this disease
and provide ancillary care to those who need it.”
“Return to Lisner: A Forum on
HIV/AIDS” will be held at 7 p.m. on July 24 at 730 21st St. N.W. Registration
is required; visit www.whitman-walker.org or telephone 202-745-7000.
The Friends of AIDS Foundation is
dedicated to enhancing the quality of life for HIV positive individuals and
empowering people to make healthy choices to prevent the spread of the HIV
virus. To learn more about The Friends of AIDS Foundation, please visit: http://www.friendsofaids.org.
TOGETHER WE REMAIN STRONG!
