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Washington, D.C. — People living with HIV and AIDS will tell local high-school students about their experiences as part of a day-long workshop aimed at raising AIDS awareness in an area where the rate of infection is 20 times the national average.
More than 300 students from high schools in Virginia, Maryland and the District of Columbia are expected to attend the AIDS Awareness Workshop 2001 Program, which is sponsored by Georgetown University Medical Center and the Global AIDS and Cancer Foundation (GACF). The workshop will take place from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Friday, November 30, to recognize World AIDS Day. The theme for the 2001 campaign is "Men and AIDS: I care. Do you?"
The focus of the day's activities, which will take place in the Research Building at Georgetown, will be on the science of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. The morning session will include welcoming remarks from Georgetown University School of Medicine Senior Associate Dean S. Ray Mitchell, as well as brief keynote sessions led by John Hogan, primary care and HIV specialist with Unity Healthcare, and Luther Virgil, MD, of Providence Hospital. Students and teachers will present AIDS awareness programs developed at their respective high schools, and students also will have the opportunity during the morning session to speak candidly with people who have HIV and AIDS.
Students will spend the afternoon in a series of workshops focusing on such topics as the immunology of the healthy body, the scientific process by which HIV infects healthy cells, HIV treatments such as protease inhibitors and the psychological effects of being infected with HIV. Presenters will include faculty from Children's National, George Washington University, Howard University and Georgetown University Medical Centers, as well as experts from the National Institutes of Health and the Montgomery County Department of Health and Human Services. The students will end the day by developing an outline for an AIDS awareness program in their own schools, and describing how they would implement it. Cash awards will be given to schools deemed most effective by a panel of experts.
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Georgetown University Medical Center includes the nationally ranked School of Medicine, School of Nursing and Health Studies, the Lombardi Cancer Center and a biomedical research enterprise. For more information, visit
www.georgetown.edu/gumc.
Established in 1994 in Washington, D.C., Global AIDS and Cancer Foundation is a non-profit organization dedicated to partnership in research, training and public health. A key goal of the foundation is promoting AIDS awareness among adolescents.
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