12 GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE November 28, 2003

Kevin Sullivan runs OAC with personal experience of AIDS

by Kaizaad Kotwal

Columbus-The Ohio AIDS Coalition is currently headed by Kevin Sullivan, himself an AIDS patient. Sullivan said that he came to this job "two-and-a-half years ago once I started to get better due to the new meds after a long illness."

Initially, Sullivan was asked to be the interim director. He was then asked to stay

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when he "fell in love with the work."

Sullivan defines OAC's main mission as "doing advocacy work in the state and nationally to make sure that people are getting the best services and that the agencies are getting the best funding."

"OAC also provides people with leadership training so that in turn they can go out and help do advocacy work and help get our services out to more people" Sullivan said.

The Ohio AIDS Colaition has 2,700 members, including individuals and agencies like the Columbus and Cleveland AIDS task forces. Their current annual operating bud-

get is $300,000, part of which is a grant from the Ohio Department of Health, which takes care of staff salaries and rent for OAC's space.

"One hundred percent of the money we raise outside of the ODH grant is put back towards services and programs that we offer," Sullivan said. His only other co-worker is a part-time assistant.

OAC has a variety of programs they offer

KAIZAAD KOTWAL

each year to advance their work and the advocacy causes on behalf of people living with AIDS. The organization hosts "Healing Weekend" retreats all around the state, where patients get to interact with medical providers, mental health experts and other service providers.

"Our main goal with these retreats," Sullivan said, "is to get people to take care of the disease."

OAC also offers leadership training workshops, and one of the goals is to increase leadership roles for demographics outside of gay white males.

Sullivan and OAC have also been organizing annual trips to Washington, D.C., bringing Ohioans with AIDS to the nation's capital to meet with the state's congressional delegation. This annual excursion is done in collaboration with the National Association of People With AIDS.

"We are not lobbying," Sullivan emphasizes, "but rather we are educating the Congress about living with AIDS."

Sullivan is also quick to acknowledge that "the response from these officials

is almost always very good."

According to Sullivan, "there are pressing needs in Ohio," but that the state is also relatively better off than most others in funding for AIDS case management and prevention programs.

"One of our most immediate concerns is getting services to those with AIDS in the rural areas of the state," he said, "partly because there is not a strong presence of AIDS service organizations there and partly because health care in general is poor in that region of Ohio."

He said that areas like Cleveland, Cincinnati, Columbus and other larger metropolitan areas get more funds and services mainly because "it is true that the squeaky wheels get the grease."

Sullivan believes that part of the work done by his agency and others like it is being complicated by the current change in emphasis by the Centers for Disease Control on prevention. The CDC has been insisting recently that prevention efforts be focused on those who are positive and at risk for reinfection with other strains of the virus.

"This means that these new criteria from the CDC involves more testing of at-risk populations," Sullivan said, "but the Department of Health and Human Services is not making such increased funding available for care and treatment."

Sullivan said that Congress recently approved a $25 million increase for drug assistance programs nationwide. "This is simply not adequate," Sullivan said, "because even by the most conservative estimates, an additional $200 million is needed for such programs."

"What the government still fails to understand," Sullivan continued, "is that once a patient gets ill the costs are far more outrageous than the money required for drug assistance, prevention and case management."

Sullivan, like many others in the arena of AIDS prevention and case management, believes that programs like the AIDS drug assistance program and its Ohio equivalent

"actually save money in the long run.”

"As I like to tell our legislators and others," Sullivan said, “drugs keeps people working and this makes them tax producers, as opposed to tax consumers."

This sort of rhetoric does get the attention of some politicos, but Sullivan is dismayed that "it is still so hard to convince the state assembly and legislature" of these ideas and facts. For Sullivan, in the battle of care and treatment of PWAs, "the drug assistance program is the biggest prevention vehicle."

Sullivan is also cognizant of the fact that his work is compounded by recent complacency and apathy surrounding AIDS and HIV.

"This is purely anecdotal," he said, “but young gay men in particular seem to have no fear of HIV that my generation did and they simply don't want to hear the messages from

us.

Sullivan has a wish list as his work proceeds into 2004 and beyond.

"First of all," he said with great emphasis, "is that I want the legislative branch to understand the urgency of public health in Ohio with reference to HIV, hepatitis, and other STDs."

"Hepatitis C as an epidemic is starting right now and people are really going to be shocked when it reaches our awareness," Sullivan said, "as to how bad it is. Congress really has its head in the sand on health issues, and the state and federal legislative bodies need to recognize" that to attack these issues "now is more inexpensive before it gets out of control."

At the urging of John Farina of Cleveland, Sullivan has recently added a legislative action web site (modeled after the Human Rights Campaign site) connected to OAC's main one. "I have been amazed as to how effective it has been," Sullivan said.

For the legislative action component of OAC and for more information about their mission and work, visit www.ohioaids coalition.org or call 614-444-1683.

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This World AIDS Day

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December 1, 2003

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Contact us for informatie the clinical trials we a bifening. CWRU/UHC AIDS Clinical Trials Unit: (216)368-AIDS (2437) http://www.clevelandactu.org

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