HMS Hosts First Student AIDS Forum

Students and faculty members from the Harvard Medical School (HMS) hosted the first annual student forum on AIDS—entitled Action on AIDS: Providing Tools for Change—this past Friday and Saturday.

Students from the Harvard Medical School AIDS Action Initiative (HMSAAI) and faculty members from the HMS Division of AIDS organized the event, which was held at the Tosteson Medical Education Center at HMS.

Approximately 110 students, faculty members, health providers, and activists attended the forum. Students came from Columbia, Yale, Tufts, Northeastern, Boston University, and the University of Massachusetts, as well as from HMS, the Harvard School of Public Health, and Harvard College.

The forum consisted of panels, breakout sessions, and a networking lunch aimed at encouraging dialogue between students and faculty about HIV research and patient care.

HMSAAI President Meera Kotagal, a second-year medical student at HMS, said her group first approached faculty members at the Harvard Division of AIDS last spring about the forum.

“Students were very interested in HIV, but weren’t getting a chance to learn very much about the issues during the course of their classes as they would like to,” she said.

Visiting Professor of Health Policy at Northeastern University Jean F. McGuire delivered the keynote address. The former Assistant Commissioner of Health in Massachusetts urged students to hold more open discussions about sexually transmitted diseases and drug use.

“Talking about intimacy, sexual orientation, sexual debut, and issues of drug use has to be a more commonplace and unfettered discussion than we’ve been able to achieve,” she said.

McGuire cited statistics showing that regions where only abstinence is taught, such as many in the South, have significantly higher rates of pregnancy and HIV transmission. Funding for abstinence-only education has increased substantially in the U.S., McGuire said, and intervention funds are dwindling.

“We’re going in the wrong direction in terms of where we’re committing funds,” she said.

Paul Sax, clinical director of the Division of Infectious Diseases and the HIV Program at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and associate professor of medicine at HMS, gave a presentation on medical and clinical issues in HIV patient care.

One of his patients, Joan Bennett, talked about living with HIV-AIDS.

“It would have been better to tell someone I was dying of cancer than living with AIDS,” she said, explaining why she initially resisted HIV testing.

Jennifer Y. Chen, Treasurer of HMSAAI and member of the forum planning committee, said one of the goals of the forum was to teach students about social and political issues that are not always covered in medical school.

“I don’t think you’ll be effective as a doctor if you don’t understand why a patient may not be able to see you because that patient has no family support or is having problems accessing health care,” she said.

Chen said another goal of the conference was to pair students with faculty members who share their interests.

“We realized that there were so many resources at the medical school with respect to HIV, but it was hard for students to access them,” Chen said.

Several members of the Harvard AIDS Coalition (HAC) also attended.

“We’re trying to broaden our coalition and make a joint partnership with the School of Public Health and the Medical School,” said Sarah A. Moran ’07, vice president of HAC.

But Laura S. Powers ’08 said the conference was geared more toward medical students, and that some issues addressed at the conference were too technical for undergraduates to understand.

Lisette N. Enumah ’08 agreed.

“I didn’t know all that was going on,” she said. “But I was inspired to know more.”

The forum concluded with organizing a call-in to Congress for the global fund to fight AIDS.

Gizella S. Nagy, program director for the Infectious Diseases Fellowship Training Program at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, said she hoped students learned that they could join the fight against HIV now.

“The message for today is that you can be involved, you can do a lot, you can have an impact on this infection that really affects all of us, and you don’t have to be a fourth-year medical student or a resident or an infectious disease doctor,” Nagy said. “It can really be something you can participate in at any level.”