♪ i'm cheryl jennings. today's show is about hiv and aids. hiv is the human immunodeficiency virus which can lead to aids.

unlike other viruses, once you have hiv you have it for life. overtime. hiv can destroy cells in the immune system much so that the body can't fight off diseases and infection. before the introduction of antiretro viral therapy in the 1990s. people with hiv could progress to aids in a few year. that therapy is not a cure but the treatment can dramatically prolong the lives of people infect hiv and lower their chances of infecting others. somebody diagnosed with hiv and treated before the disease is advanced can lead an almost normal life. recentlies was able to sit down and discuss the work several people are doing to make a difference. neal julian know, i want to thank you so much for being here. >> thank you, cheryl, it's great to be back. >> you've been here for a while. >> yeah, yeah. >> i know you love your job and doing great work. can you bring us up to date?

>> san francisco aids foundation in the 33rd year, when we provide direct services and programs all at no cost for clients throughout san francisco, we one one of the largest testing centers in san francisco. we have possibly 15,000 clinical physicians and we treat hiv. hepatitis testing. people want to check in about perhaps their alcohol use, substance use, isolation, loneliness, depression, those kinds of things and we also have a tremendous outreach in the community for prevention services of and programs for people hiv negative and people that are hiv positive. it's a wide array of treatments and services. >> a lot of people think

hiv/aids is over. but it's not. >> that's true. we've moved from that very early part of crisis and intervention where many people in san francisco died sometimes even within days offing the virus in the very beginning to a time of where it was sickness and disease and we weren't really sure. then the antiretro virals came in and we're moving now to a ere people are living with hiv and living well with hiv. they're always going to have health issues, they'll have health comepy indications but they're able to survive and that that's a great story yet at the same time in san francisco we have about one new infection a day in san francisco. primarily among the gay and bisexual community and community of color. so we still have our work together in battling hiv and aids. >> this is why we have to have that to keep our awareness out there. >> right, exactly. >> tell us about the turnout, do people think this is over?

>> it has changed over the 27 years. it's changed over that time. the very early days it was the gay community that was there. now we find it's a wide mixture of people. tremendous support from the community. people out there with their family members and long r loved ones. it's important the message reach be behind the community. we have people that will help us raise a couple million dollars of not just the san francisco aids foundation but another 25 organizations walking on their event. participating in the >>h >> know dan ashley will be out there. i'm going to be out there as well. >> yeah. can't wait to have you out there a week from today it is. >> we put it on the calendar. >> july 13. >> right. >> how early should people be there. >> people should be there to register about 8:00 or so.

the walk will kick off at 10:00. many people make a day of it. i know many corporate partners plan their picnic for the day with their employees. it's a great time. >> i love having the family out there. it's not that far. >> it's only 10 k. >> we can do that. >> sure you can. >> the most important thing, keep awareness and get tested. >> we want everyone to get tested. if you're a gay and bisexual man engaging in sex you should get tested. we're telling people you should be tested every six months to maintain your status. even if you're hiv positive the programs and services we offer are available for those people as well. we have 16,000 hiv positive people in san francisco. half of those are reaching the age of 50 or above. the new program for hiv in older adults will be very important into the fut future. >> thanks much. thanks for being here. >> thanks, cheryl, it's great to be here. >> we'll come back after we take

a short break. now we'll tell you about hiv camp for kids. making an impact in africa. andalk coming up aids walk comi july 21. get that date right. don't forget to register. of course i'll be there with the youth team. turn away, hello from your camera, we'll stream it for

welcome back to "beyond the headlines, we are talking about hiv and aidses. a marin county man living with aids was inspired to create a camp for young people in south africa. raising money to provide a permanent camp site outside of cape town. i visited that 2009 with robert shay and his wife. their charity is called our fertile ground. it works with young people in the poorest town of cape wn. i met robert's john, robert

junior at a cam with children with aids in north california. it now has a permanent home in livermore, thanks to the foundation. the founder of camp sunburst is jerry de larosa brooks. she was the first woman in the country to create a camp for children with aids on the west coast. i was privileged to work with you back then. as we talked about this i was the one to first hold a child with aids in this market. it was kind of shocking back then. i'm so glad we've some so far. >> it's really wonderful, cheryl. thank you for inviting me. >> thank you for the work you're doing. you're working in two places. >> that's correct. >> you're still working with teenagers, corrects? >> teenagers and young adults. >> welbring us up to date. >> pretty much in the united states it's been completely eradica

eradicated. now we have children born with aids turning into adolescents, so they need to have programming that supports them even beyond that into adult medical care. when the young people turn 18 they still need to have the support to stay adherence to medications so now we're also developing programming that will help make that transition from pediatric care into adult care. >> the big thing for them, though, is to take their medication. >> the big thing for the teams is to remain add her ent. >> it's incredibly tough they don't like the side effects. you work with them through the taylor foundation and also have a new program called one love. >> one love is for youth in the to 24.ge of 18 24. those youths really need to be supported in terps of remaining adherence to education, to learn how to interview for jobs, to fill out applications, to go to college and all those kind of

skills that they need to live on with the virus. >> that's a lot of -- almost like a part to them. >> it actually feels like that. many youth started with me when they were 6, 7 years old. now i have youths that were part of my life that are 30 years old. it's really amazing. >> you were transitions. working with ucsf researchers over there. tell me about that. >> faces of the program that is stationed at uc san francisco. it's part of their global aids initiative. research initiative and it's also partnered with bixby reproductive health initiative here in the united states. and that faces is a clinic located where the highest pref lens of hiv is in kenya. >> how big that that problem

there? >> well, the clinic itself, i believe there's close to over 1 million people that are hiv positive or have aids in kenya. i believe it's 1.3 million people who are living with the virus. and faces sees about 1, i'm sorry, 100,000. 100,000 individuals living with the virus and of those individuals, there are about 15,000 children in their program that are hiv positive. so what we've done is partnered with them to provide the best care for children and youth. in particular, the teenagers because there's a very large population of adolescents who need support. what the program is is the peer leadership program and what we've done is trained six peer leaders living with hiv and aids to provide social site support groups for children and teens on a monthly basis and do

educational outreach on skills. >> so how much time did you spend when you go to the country like that? >> this time i'm going for three weeks. i have a lot i need to accomplish during my visit this time. >> are you posting information about this program on your website? >> yes, yes, yes, yes. >> people can learn more if they want to participate. perhaps you're looking for volunteers, donations? >> definitely donations. volunteers, not so much right now. this year we are going to hold our first youth retreat program in kenya, so it will be a three-day retreat for adolescents and support groups. >> i can't wait to learn more about this. thank you, great to see you. we do have to take another break. when we come back we'll meet an hiv positive woman and learn what she is doing to make a difference. you also don't want to miss the aids walk coming up next week.

it's not too late to sign up or sponsor a friend or do two. i'll be there at check point 3 to cheer you on. we'll also be streaming this

welcome back to "beyond the headlines." we're talking about hiv and aids in the studio. joining me is the executive director of the positive woman's network based in oakland. i want to thank you for being here today. >> thanks. >> i'm really eager to learn about what you do. first of all, why did you get involved with this? >> thank you so much for having me on the show. i am a woman living with hiv. i was diagnosed in 2002. after my diagnosis, i really realized there weren't much set up to accommodate the needs of women living with hiv. i had a lot of different interactions with the health care system. once i met other women living

with hiv i learned my interactions were that unique. in 2008 a group of hiv women came together. all hiv positive. transgender women. women born women. the youngest was 21, the oldest was 72. we came together to form a organized voice to fight for our rights and health care and services we need. that's what we did. that's how the n was important. >> i want to show everybody this really cool t-shirt she brought to me. this is called sister hood solidarity action. tell me about that. >> that's our tagline. it's really about we're all in this together. we have each other's backs. we recognize that a lot of women living with hiv are coming with a lot of trauma, even before their diagnosis, often. >> what are some of the issues that they face, that you face? i'm sure discrimination.

>> absolutely, stigma ma, discrimination. most women living with hiv are low income. most women of color. 60% of black ar african-american, another 20% of latina. about 64% of women living with hiv are living on incomes $20,000 or less. you can imagine they're facing a whole lot of things going on not to mention care-taking responsibility. nearly 76% of hiv positive women are responsible for one child under the age of 18. when a woman goes to access health care she's faced with a whole set of issues than a man living with hiv. these systems were primarily set up when the academic was more -- back in the '80s, in the '90s when it was predominantly.

there are a quarter of infections in this country are women. we need policies that address our needs. >> i have friends that are hiv positive who are with people who are not. so the subject of sex always comes up. >> uh-huh. >> how do you present your saf and how do you protect others. >> it's important to talk about that. you asked about some of the issues women living with hiv face. some of them are stigma, including internalized stigma about our own sexuality and production. women with hiv face very high rates of violence. there's data that shows that, you know, an extraordinarily high number of hiv positive women have experienced intimate partner violence and many continue to experience that after their diagnosis. why is this important? it's important when we think about relationships. hivy status is use of control or

manipulation. if a woman is hiv positive and depending on a partner financially. or she might want to have children or she has children or she's reliant on a partner for sharing her home or, you know, there do be a whole section of reasons not even including social status which partnership often confers for women living with hiv. if she's faced with an abusive or violent situation she may not be able to get out of it. the most troubling thing about this, there's really competing date that ta that shows trouble and violence lead to death for hiv positive women. >> there's so much about this issue. but we'll have to refer people to your website now. i want to know more later. >> sure. >> thank you for the insight. i appreciate what you're doing. >> thanks so much. cheryl. we have to take a short break. when we come back how local teens are teaching each other about hiv.

also mark your calendar for the aids walk on july 21. i will be there with the abc 7 news team. be sure to wave hello to our camera because we'll be streaming this live on abc 7 news.com.

welcome back to "beyond the headlines" let's continue our discussion about hiv and aids in the bay area. we all know education is vitally important. here in the studio with me right now is the bay area executive director of peer health exchange, this is fascinating to me. kids working with kids. >> our mission is to give teens the knowledge and skills they need to make decision including hiv/aids. and how we do that is through training college, teaching public high schools that lack comprehensive health education. hiv/aids is one of the three

workshops we teach primarily in oakland and san francisco. >> how do you get students to volunteer for thatth? that's a great recruiting process. >> we recruit volunteers at the beginning of the school year and our college sites are berkeley and st. mary's we recruit most from uc berkeley. that allow us us to be selective. we not only have volunteers, teaching in classrooms but we have the best most qualified and most committed. >> do they get college credits for this, do they get paid or is it just a good feeling? >> it is truly a volunteer position and we have volunteers coming in at the lowest level, four to six hours a week and highest level ten to 12 hours per week. they don't get paid currently, where they don't currently get credit, we're looking into it. it's about what they're doing in the community providing health and education to kids who have

not otherwise gotten it. and we do a lot of training, we get public speaking stills, classroom management skills, cultural responsiveness and engagement. so they can get a lot out of it and they can use that in their professional careers in health and education. >> we know there have been so many cutbacks in schools. of course you made a very important point how we don't have this in schools anymore. but you don't have grownups doing it. you have young kids learning from people who are closer to their own age. >> yeah. and that is at the core of our model. back in 1999 when the ceo and co-founder started this program and she was asked by a teacher. who department feel comfortable teaching with sex, hiv and drugs and alcohol herself and asked her to do so. it's the peer dynamic. that puts information and skills and decision making in context and language that relates to the students and then makes him more likely to act on the

information. . how do high school kids react to this information? sex is always uncomfortable to talk about with other people when you're that age. >> that's when the peer model comes in to train them to specifically open up the conversation and ideally the college volunteer will facilitate lettering between the teenagers themselves. >> and they use language that they're supposed to use that doctors and nurses use. >> and we use language that teens are used to. teenagers do really receive the information and are acting on it, so 94% of our teenagers say they will using is. they learn to make the healthy decision. 61% already have. the decision they make, a common one is using a condom in addition to birth control and we have 42% growth and knowledge. a lot of positive indicators of impact going forward. >> we have a few seconds to left. what do you want people to know

about your program right now? >> we are selfing 82% of oakland ninth graders. we are trying to make sure all ninth graders have health education. >> if you get to them early, you can save a life. >> absolutely. >> the website? >> www.purehealthexchange.org. >> and i'm sure you have facebook and twitter? >> we did. >> we'll post all of that so people can learn what you're doing. >> thank you. >> appreciate it. that is all the time we have today. a special thanks for all of our guests. don't forget aids walk will take place sunday july 21. still time to register or sponsor a friend. while you're walking look for me. tell your friends and families to look for you on camera because we will be streaming it live on abc 7 news.com. we'll have more detailed information about today's program. go to our website.

abc 7 news.com/community. we're also on facebook at abc 7 news affairs. and i invite you to volume me on twitter. have a great week. have a great week. see you next time.

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it's a live big first. live big. i'm about to take on the disneyland tinkerbell half marathon with 3 familiar faces. set, go. it's a heart pounding 13.1 miles of neverland excitement. they've come along way but are they ready for the challenge. she wants to quit so bad. and brace yourselves for the unexpected. i think her heart was racing and her blood i think her heart was racing and her blood pressure was a little bit low. ♪