My Visit to the White House: Putting a Face on HIV/AIDS
Posted by
Cristina Pena
San Francisco, California
March 3, 2010
A couple of months ago, I visited the White House to participate in a Youth and HIV/AIDS Meeting hosted by the Office of National AIDS Policy. Our mission was to discuss the leading issues relating to young people and HIV/AIDS and generate recommendations for the first-ever National HIV/AIDS Strategy currently being drafted by the Obama Administration.
I was born HIV-positive, contracting the virus from my mother at birth. When I was born, there were no medicines to prevent mother-to-child transmission of HIV. However, today, medicines exist that effectively reduce transmission of HIV from mothers to their infants and dramatically decrease the number of babies born HIV-positive in developed countries.
Yet unfortunately, today children are still born HIV-positive. This is simply unacceptable!
As a longtime activist, committed to ensuring a generation born free of HIV and increasing compassion toward those infected, I took my voice straight to the top — to the White House.
Cristina with her boyfriend, Chris, outside the White House. |
I joined several HIV-positive youth from across the country to discuss ways to help youth and young adults receive better access to HIV/AIDS prevention, care, and treatment services. United as a group, the meeting was alive with passion and power! It was a day of hard work, but it was all so exciting and deeply rewarding.
It doesn’t end here — I need your help to keep the momentum going. If we’re really going to turn the HIV/AIDS epidemic around for children across the country, I need your help — and I need you to speak out — today. Join me in the fight!
Send a message to President Obama TODAY and urge him to support women and children with HIV/AIDS in the National HIV/AIDS Strategy.
Please hurry — time is running out!
Cristina Pena serves as a Family Ambassador for the Foundation. Read Cristina’s story.