Niac Provides Services, Help To All Affected By Hiv/Aids

North Idaho AIDS Coalition provides advocacy and case management for people with HIV/AIDS. NIAC also provides prevention outreach and interventions for people at risk for HIV. Keith Wolter, director of the agency, answered the following questions.

Q. How did it start?

A. NIAC began in 1989 as a support group for people with HIV/AIDS, based in Coeur d’Alene. No other specific services were provided at that time for people infected with or affected by HIV in North Idaho. In 1996, NIAC contracted with the state of Idaho to provide case management services for people living with HIV/AIDS and prevention outreach for people at risk for HIV.

Q. How many paid staff members do you have? What is their training/ background?

A. NIAC has two paid staff - an HIV prevention advocate and a case manager. The prevention advocate/ director has a master’s of organizational leadership degree and a master’s of divinity degree. The case manager recently completed her bachelor’s of social work degree. Both have been active in the field for many years, as volunteers and then, as staff in Coeur d’Alene and earlier in Chicago.

Q. What kinds of service opportunities exist for volunteers?

A. Most volunteer opportunities center around community awareness events such as World AIDS Day in December, ongoing condom distribution, and the NIAC fundraisers, especially the annual Wine Taste, held at the Clark House every October. NIAC has about 20 volunteers, some of whom serve on the board, others who help with the above activities.

Q. How are you funded?

A. NIAC is funded primarily through the federal HIV/AIDS Bureau with Ryan White grants for case management and through the Centers for Disease Control HIV Prevention grants. Some of these federal grants are granted through the state of Idaho STD/AIDS Program; others come directly from the federal agencies. Private foundations often fill the gaps in our program with monies for such events as our rural gay men’s health retreats.

Q. What services do you provide to the community?

A. NIAC provides case-management services to people living with HIV/AIDS, their families, friends and loved ones. NIAC also provides specific prevention interventions for populations most at risk for HIV infection, including men who have sex with men, injection drug users, and women who are sexual partners of the first two populations.

Q. What is the impact of your services?

A. The impact in case management is easier to measure than in prevention. Case management has helped people with HIV/AIDS gain access to medical treatment, to expensive HIV medications, and to counseling and support services. In a society where so much of the health care system is fragmented and unavailable and inaccessible to rural and low income people, this coordination of treatment and care can be a big challenge.

Prevention is harder to measure. NIAC recently received some significant grants to expand prevention programs to at-risk populations. Part of these activities will be to assess how prevention work is making an impact. Sometimes what is hardest is simply getting people in North Idaho to realize that they are at risk - that HIV is not just a big city, gay men’s disease. The Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) can and does affect everyone, especially if they are sharing injection drug needles or having unprotected sex with someone of either gender with whom they are not sexually exclusive.

Q. How has your agency grown? What growth do you predict?

A. Organizationally, NIAC had only one half-time position a year ago. Currently, we have increased our staffing (through some pretty furious grant-writing) to 1.75 fulltime staff persons. By summer’s end that will be around three full-time staff persons. By the end of the year we hope to have four staff persons covering North Idaho. In terms of clients with HIV/AIDS, NIAC experienced a tremendous growth in 1999. Our client base increased by more than 250 percent. Most of these clients were not new infections - more people are simply coming forward for services as they experience the opportunistic infections or need medical and dental services. Many clients are moving to North Idaho from elsewhere to escape the pressures of big cities, to move closer to friends and relatives or just to enjoy the outdoors and scenery of North Idaho. For a variety of reasons, HIV is only going to get bigger in North Idaho.

Q. What additional services would you provide if you had the funding to do so?

A. Mental health counseling, substance abuse treatment, nutritional counseling for HIVpositive people, HIV drug adherence support, housing support and dental care. Primary medical care always is going to be a challenge. HIV is a complicated infection and AIDS is a complicated disease, requiring constant, ongoing education and close attention to individual patient circumstances. HIV also can be an expensive disease; HIV drug regimens can cost as much as $2,000 to $4,000 per month.

Q. What do you see as the largest unmet need of this community?

A. Two large unmet needs, actually. First, access to adequate medical and dental care. Second, lessened fear and paranoia about HIV/AIDS and less discrimination and stigmatization of people with HIV/ AIDS.

Q. What is your most underused service?

A. People being tested for HIV if they think they may have been exposed to HIV. NIAC will have the capacity to provide testing in the fall. Until then, people can be tested at the Panhandle Health District or with their doctors. If people need more information about testing or where to get tested, they can call us and leave a confidential message. We return calls when invited and are discreet. NIAC’s number is 762-8197. Our email is niacoalition@id.freei.net.