Benefit event set to help AIDS awareness efforts
IT’S THE WOMEN and kids Keith Wolter needs to reach. Gay men know how to avoid AIDS and HIV infection. Health providers, the media, volunteers, society and experience have hammered that lesson into the population devastated by the killer virus.
The message of prevention is as important as ever, but it needs to reach the people who don’t consider themselves at risk.
“Two thirds of people who get HIV get it from people who didn’t think they had it,” says Keith. He’s led the North Idaho AIDS Coalition for the past seven years and finds more and more single and married women seeking NIAC’s support. “Women and youth have no clue they’re at risk.”
Keith wants to get the word out, but outreach costs money and NIAC’s budget and staff are dropping.
“In the last 18 months, our budget has gone from $200,000 to $135,000,” Keith says. Four people ran the organization a year ago. Now, NIAC is Keith and a case manager. “A lot of prevention is grinding to a halt.”
Which is why Keith has high hopes for NIAC’s wine-tasting benefit this Sunday. Last year’s wine benefit raised $12,000. That amount of money would help NIAC reach out to women and kids this year with critical information that could save their lives.
“We want to continue working with gay men to make sure they stay OK,” he says. “But there’s another population that needs attending to.”
Stories Keith has heard first- and secondhand lead him to believe people have relaxed about AIDS. If they don’t live with the threat on a daily basis, which includes much of the heterosexual population, they’ve let down their guard.
“Based on anecdotal evidence, there’s a lot more casual sex now,” he says.
Fewer people are identifying themselves as gay or straight but are somewhere in the middle, which means no one should assume an apparently heterosexual partner is safe, Keith says. A woman in one of his recent support groups made that mistake, although few people would fault her. Her husband infected her. She was diagnosed as HIV-positive while she was pregnant. She said her husband, who’s dead now, was her first and only sexual partner.
About a third of NIAC’s 45 clients became HIV-positive through similar circumstances.
Until recently, NIAC had a grant from the Centers for Disease Control for prevention. The money went toward teaching infected people not to transmit. North Idaho was benefiting.
“We had only one or two diagnoses of HIV in North Idaho in the last few years,” Keith says.
Most of NIAC’s clients weren’t diagnosed in North Idaho anyway. They escaped from big cities to the rural and peaceful Panhandle after they were diagnosed.
Still, the small number of new diagnoses tells Keith his work to encourage safe behavior was working.
But the grant wasn’t renewed after it expired this year, partly because of budget cuts at the CDC. That money enabled NIAC to provide condoms to groups at risk, assess at no cost people’s risk based on lifestyle and reach people in remote areas.
Keith no longer has the money to offer such prevention services, and he’s worried.
“We have to take the resources we have and target well,” he says.
And try to replace some of the lost resources.
That’s where the annual wine-tasting party comes in. Participants gather at the Clark House that overlooks Hayden Lake and drink wine from Coeur d’Alene’s Wine Cellar, the Pend Oreille Winery, Bon Merd Winery, Odom, Latah Creek, Lone Canary and more.
The wines will include a huckleberry blend.
The benefit will include a generous supply of hors d’oeuvres and homemade cheesecake.
Live and silent auctions will feature a Stephen Shortridge painting, sterling silverware, jewelry and gift certificates for massages, dinners and more.
Keith hopes to raise at least as much as last year. North Idaho’s health counts on it.
Bravo
Nearly 400 people filled The Coeur d’Alene Resort to hear presidential scholar and historian Robert Dallek last week. And he offered an entertaining earful. If the Humanities Council, which brought Robert to Coeur d’Alene, had any doubts that he’d fill the room, those doubts died quickly. Tables were filled with judges – Charles Hosack and his counselor wife, Kathy – and politicians – former Lt. Gov. Jack Riggs and his artist daughter, Jennifer – healthcare workers – Terri Porcarelli and her lawyer husband, Steve McCrae – college teachers – Virginia Johnson and Tony Stewart.
So many North Idahoans are eager to learn and sent the Humanities Council a loud message: Do it again next year!