Strong Voices: Stories of Struggle & Strength Living with HIV

Our graphic novel ‘Strong Voices: Stories of Struggle & Strength Living with HIV’ is now available!

Working with very tight timelines to put this project together, our first step was to find 4 Aboriginal people living with HIV who were willing to share their story. We also needed to recruit 4 Aboriginal artists to develop these stories into picture form. Most importantly, we had to find one writer who was able to bring these stories together into a single book.

The first thing we did was put up posters calling for Storytellers. This was not an easy task - as in many communities, HIV is stigmatized and people are not always comfortable talking about their experience.

Bill, who works with Peer Support and as a speaker for AIDS Calgary, had volunteered before the project had even started. As a long-term survivor with 28 years living positive, Bill shares his story of how he became an advocate for awareness in Aboriginal communities. Bill is from a Métis settlement in northern Alberta. Keegan Starlight, a local artist from Tsuu T’ina, provided the artwork.

Michelle was one of the first people to call about participating in the project. From southern Saskatchewan, Michelle was raised in the city where she attributes her introduction to hard drugs at an earlier age. In and out of prison for most of her life, Michelle was able to reconnect to Aboriginal teachings through prison programs. She attributes her healthy lifestyle to Native spirituality and her family. Grant Smith from Edmonton provided the artwork for Michelle.

Aaron, a young man from Saskatchewan was adopted as a baby into a non-native family. Growing up he travelled across Canada and the states by hitch-hiking and train-jumping. While living in Vancouver he found out he was HIV+. With support of his family he is able to have a positive attitude and hopeful outlook. Tank Standing Buffalo provided art work for his story.

For the final interview we contacted Krista, an HIV+ mother who has given birth to HIV- children after her diagnosis. Krista is an advocate for HIV+ mothers, having faced discrimination and stigmatization in the medical system herself. Krista shares how she got to where she’s at and how her family has been her support and source of strength. Lydia Prince from Prince George illustrates her story.

With the guidance of the Strong Voices Advisory Committee and a local Blackfoot Elder/Cultural resource, we were able to include the medicine wheel teachings and provide examples of these teachings throughout the book.

The goal of this book is to bring awareness of HIV to the Aboriginal communities, where HIV is currently considered an epidemic. Due to social determinants and stigma, Aboriginal people are often diagnosed with HIV at a younger age and at later stages (with an AIDS diagnosis for example). Since 25% of Canadians who have HIV do not know it, our goal is to promote testing and harm reduction approaches while building awareness and support for those affected by HIV.

For a copy of the book (hard copy or digital) contact us at info@aidscalgary.org

Progress in HIV Vaccine Research Leads to Insight on Disease Mechanism

This article was written by Volunteer Blog Writer Beverly F. Spencer. If you are interested in being a writer for The A Word, please visit: http://www.aidscalgary.org/getinvolved/volunteer/volunteeroverview.cfm

For years Scientists at the Oregon Health & Science University have been experimenting with potential HIV vaccine developments in hopes of better understanding how HIV functions within the human immune system. Ascribing to its highly elusive nature, it has proven to be no easy task to effectively target the disease. However, recent discoveries published in the May issue of the Science journal,  have shed light on a promising new candidate that appears to behave both as a prophylactic and antidotal entity.

Coming back to this elusory quandary, this issue has been one of the major road-blocks which scientists have been challenged with, in their pharmaceutical strategies. T-cells, particularly CD8+ T-cells, serve to identify and manage virus-infected cells through short viral peptide recognition which are found on the surface of these cells. Once these peptides are marked, the T-cells execute a cytotoxic reaction to eliminate the infection. Here inherently lies the elusory element. CD8+ T-cells have a limited number of short viral peptides which they can sufficiently determine and respond to and while some of the highly vicissitudinous HIV viral peptides do become the subject of target, the ones critical for cell survival evade detection.

The name of the game, then, seems obvious: to cast the net wide and capture these vulnerable viral peptides. In theory, widening the scope of detection markers would eventually lead HIV to fall prey to cell destruction. By allowing CD8+ T-cells to recognize a larger variety of these short viral peptides, they should be able identify the crucial peptides needed to render the virus incapacitated.

Ironically, it is through another virus, cytomegalovirus (CMV), which may serve to accomplish this task. Using SIV, an animal mirror-virus of HIV, researchers were able to  reconstruct CMV to produce SIV-specific proteins which showed surprising results. SIV-specific T-cells emerged which contained a recognition breadth of viral peptides that far exceeded what regular T-cells could do independently including the attempts of prior vaccines.  What was even more interesting about this engineered response was that it was able to target viruses which had previously evaded extermination which means this vaccine may prove to be useful in a two-front powerhouse attack on the endeavor to eradicate HIV.

Although the concept of a customizable therapeutic agent, such as the CMV vehicle, may create potential for a viable future vaccine to hit the market, there is still a long way to go before human clinical trials can begin its initial phase.  However, the new information has proved useful as the research findings in themselves gave the medical community an invaluable perspective on the relational functionality between the human immune system and the HIV disease. This will hopefully improve the interim therapeutic model until clinical trials can be brought to the agenda.

References:

Science Daily. (2013). Promising Strategy to Help Vaccines Outsmart HIV. Retrieved from: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/05/130524122012.htm

Appay, V., Nixon, D.F., Donahoe, S.M., Gillespie, G.M.A., Dong, T., King, A., ... Rowland-Jones, S.L. (2000). HIV-Specific Cd8+ T Cells Produce Antiviral Cytokines but are Impaired in Cytolytic Function. The Journal of Experimental Medicine, 192 (1), 63-76. doi: 10.1084/jem.192.1.63

 

 

Celebrate Volunteers Across Canada: National Volunteer Week April 10th - 16th

Some of our exceptional volunteers featured here at the 2010 Scotiabank AIDS Walk for Life.

In 1943, the War Services Department of the Government of Canada launched an initiative to recognize the vital contribution that women made to the war effort on the home front. National Volunteer Week was announced and events took place from east to west in Montreal, Toronto, Winnipeg and Vancouver.

These activities were the grassroots beginnings of a national volunteer recognition and appreciation campaign. This campaign has since developed into Canada’s largest and most prominent celebration of volunteers, volunteerism and local citizenship. Throughout the 70’s and 80’s local communities and organizations led the charge by generating awareness about the benefits of volunteer contributions and advocating the importance of national volunteer recognition. In 1990, the third week of April was officially proclaimed National Volunteer Week in all communities across the Canada. Today, it is the most anticipated and exciting volunteer event of the year, where over 12 million Canadians are honoured for generously donating more than 2 billion hours of their time every year to causes they care about.
Volunteers: Passion. Action. Impact.

Volunteer Canada chose this theme to pay tribute to the volunteer heroes who dedicate themselves to making their communities a great place to live; And the volunteer heroes of AIDS Calgary do just that! They turn their passion into action, volunteering their time, energy, skills and resources to HIV/AIDS education, awareness, prevention, advocacy and support. In the last year, over 300 volunteers donated 5595 volunteer hours to countless programs and projects. AIDS Calgary volunteers help cook meals for our lunch program, provide complementary therapy and wellness services to people living with HIV, deliver hampers during the holiday season, plan major special events in the community, speak about HIV in schools and other communities, host education booths at local community events, provide peer education, sit on advisory committees for special projects, take pictures, make tens of thousands of condom packs, provide administrative support, sit on the Board of Directors and even write for this blog. This is just a sample of the work our volunteers do.

Our volunteers help to sustain our community initiatives and play a key role in helping to fulfill our mission. We would like to thank all of our volunteers for continuing to put their passion to action and making a significant and powerful impact on reducing the harm associated with HIV for all individuals and improving the quality of life of those living with HIV/AIDS.

We invite you to celebrate National Volunteer Week with us April 10th to 16th. Get involved by volunteering your time, taking part in a community event, thanking a volunteer, or telling a friend.

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed it is the only thing that ever has.” - Margaret Mead

Note: Although National Volunteer Week (NVW) was designated the third week of April, the date was changed this year to ensure that Canadian volunteers are the national focal point during NVW and avoid overlap with other holidays that fall within the same time frame.

References: Volunteer/Benevole Canada Website, Volunteer Alberta National Volunteer Week Resource Kit

This article was written by our Coordinator of Volunteer Engagement.