Hank Trout

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Another survey with HIV long-term survivors. Have we learned anything new?

On Wednesday, March 22, 2023, the Survivors of HIV Advocating for Research Engagement (SHARE) Board conducted a webinar highlighting the results of their survey “Aging with HIV: What do you need to thrive?” They sought to answer questions such as, “What are the key health-related questions/issues that research should address around HIV and aging?,” “What matters most to people aging with HIV?,” and “What health outcomes are of most relevance to people aging with HIV?” Sadly, the SHARE survey and report revealed nothing new.  Their overall conclusions were that:  It is notable that SHARE meant for the survey not only […]

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Keeping hope alive as a long-term survivor

If you were diagnosed with HIV in the first fifteen years of the AIDS pandemic, your doctor might as well have handed you the diagnosis with one hand and with the other a death certificate, just waiting for the appropriate date to be filled in. Having HIV was an almost certain death sentence. Those of us who were diagnosed as HIV-positive in those years were told to “get your affairs in order,” meaning, “prepare to die.” Many of us did exactly that: we quit work, lived on SSDI payments, settled debts if we could, alerted our friends, and learned to […]

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A Season of Giving Thanks — For What?

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We who live with HIV live in a country where many of our fellow citizens seem adamantly determined to negate our very lives. Thirty-seven states continue to criminalize being HIV-positive, despite our knowing that people living with undetectable viral loads cannot pass the virus on to others via sex. Twelve of those states refused to expand Medicaid, cutting many PWAs off from the medications they need to live. During the first two years of the Covid-19 pandemic, many of the services available to people living with HIV were curtailed: as funds and personnel were diverted from HIV to COVID-19, clinics […]