By snoadmin
Cal State Long Beach’s Health Resource Center, along with the Program Council, Project Choice, the Women’s Resource Center and Student Health Services, presented a group of panelists to speak to students and faculty about HIV, its misconceptions, how it changes lives and added their own personal experiences.
The HIV Positive Speakers Panel was put on to acknowledge World AIDS Day, which takes place on Dec. 1, and The HIV Positive Speakers Panel is a “kick-off” event. More events involving World AIDS Day will follow the rest of the week.
World AIDS Day was established in 1988 and became an international day of awareness.
“We annually do something for HIV and AIDS awareness, but this is the first year this has been so large,” said Heidi Burkey of the Health Resource Center. “We have worked hard by collaborating with other groups to make this possible.”
Listeners were given small red ribbons to wear on their clothes and were welcomed to refreshments, red bracelets and condoms. The panelists, which included Hayley Edick, Jason King and Sherri Lewis, shared not only their views and interacted with the audience by answering questions, but they also encouraged them to get tested, since the tests are accurate and give quicker results.
“It’s not in everyone’s mind to get tested for HIV,” said Edick, an early child development and family studies major, who is in her last year at CSULB. “It needs to be somewhere in people’s minds.” Edick shared how she contracted HIV through blood transfusions. She said she was a premature baby and needed the transfusions because her body couldn’t produce blood on its own.
Sherri Lewis, an AIDS educator/counselor who writes a monthly column about women and HIV in a national AIDS publication One Voice, spoke at the event last year. But this year, she voiced the importance of awareness and education.
“It’s important to be educated and knowledgeable. Education will lead people to educate themselves,” she said. “HIV kills, people die. It’s important to get tested and know your status. Education is still our only vaccine.”
After one of her close friends died from the disease, Lewis decided that while she was going for a doctor’s visit to get her blood drawn, she request an HIV test. She tested positive for the disease in 1987.
Even though it was King’s first time as a panelist, he said he believed the event was informative and that it should happen more often and events that involve HIV awareness need to be on college campuses. King shared that even though it was hard dealing with being HIV positive, he has the support of his mother and his friends.
“It shouldn’t be taboo and it isn’t an issue that should be beat around the bush,” said the music performance major who plans to return to CSULB in the spring. “Unless people come together as a collective unit, nothing is going to happen. This disease doesn’t attack a certain race or sexual orientation. It affects everyone. People need to be aware.”
To spread consciousness about HIV and AIDS there will also be a screening of the movie “Touch Me” from 4 to 7 p.m. on Nov. 29 at the Multicultural Center and the World AIDS Day Awareness Fair will take place from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Nov. 30 at Maxson Plaza near the fountains at Brotman Hall. Students can also get free and rapid HIV tests in 20 minutes between Parking Lot 3 and the Physical Education building, courtesy of Long Beach Department of Public Health, who is sponsoring the tests. For additional information visit the Health Resource Center’s Web site at csulb.edu/hrc.
