Members of the Dartmouth Coalition for Global Health participated in strategic advocacy workshops and discussed ways that students can increase the response to the global HIV/AIDS epidemic at the national Student Global AIDS Campaign conference at Harvard University last weekend, according to Cameron Nutt '11, a member of the DCGH leadership board. DCGH sent 27 students the largest number of representatives compared to the groups from15 institutions at the conference Nutt said.
The two-day conference was the first national meeting of the Student Global AIDS Campaign, a group founded in 2001 to mobilize student supporters of the domestic HIV/AIDS activist movement, according to Nutt.
"Since 2001, students have been working with advocacy groups in the [United States] and in many different countries around the world to call for equitable global health policy that will extend those same types of rights to patients living with HIV," he said.
The conference's main goal was to encourage communication and collaboration between undergraduate students at different universities, Nutt said.
"DCGH is forming a network of students who are passionate about global health policy and the implications that it has both for our interests as students and what we see as one of the biggest fronts in the struggle for social justice," he said.
The trainings and workshops included breakout sessions that provided new ideas about how to move forward in the struggle for HIV/AIDS care, according to Sarah Kler '12. The conference also helped to guide DCGH's future agenda, Kler said.
The group plans to host a "teach-in" event during Spring term that will educate the Dartmouth and Upper Valley communities about HIV/AIDS issues and student activism, according to Carla Castillo '11, a member of the DCGH leadership board.
"We're planning to educate ourselves to be more ready for more direct action," she said. "It was partly a training conference, so we got to talk to a lot of other groups who were a lot more experienced."
DCGH members, who have been disappointed with President Barack Obama's response to the AIDS crisis, will aim to remind him of his stated commitment to increase foreign assistance for HIV/AIDS care, Nutt said.
"Since [Obama] came into office, the funding levels have flat-lined," he said. "The lesson from activism over the past two decades is that you need to take direct action and really mobilize."
DCGH pressured Obama last October, interrupting him to demand more federal funding for global AIDS relief as he spoke at a campaign event for Gov. Deval Patrick, D-Mass., in Boston, The Dartmouth previously reported. As the students were escorted out by security guards, Obama told them to compare the Republicans' agenda with that of the Democrats, highlighting that Republicans would cut AIDS funding if they gained control of Congress.
Many new members of DCGH are startled by the influence of politics on global health, according to Nutt.
"You can't isolate politics from issues you care about," he said.
Three representatives from the Health Global Access Project, the institutional partner for the Student Global AIDS Campaign, attended the conference, according to Nutt.
Health Global Access Project, which formed in 1999, is composed of human rights activists, individuals living with HIV/AIDS, health experts and other individuals who campaign against policies that "deny treatment to millions and fuel the spread of HIV," according to the organization's website. Health Global Access Project encourages international corporations to provide treatment to workers with HIV/AIDS, pressures drug manufacturers to provide treatment to individuals in developing countries and trains advocates across the globe on a variety of AIDS/HIV issues.
"We've been collaborating with them since the beginning of this year to really get the student infrastructure up and running," Nutt said.
The representatives led several sessions and talked to the students about ways in which they can implement initiatives on their individual campuses, according to Sara Stone'13. Nutt emphasized that DCGH focuses on global health and social justice "holistically," but that HIV/AIDS is an especially good vehicle for social justice advocacy.
"HIV/AIDS funding is the most important line of argumentation given the political context right now," Nutt said. "Because HIV is a chronic disease, when you build the systems to provide care for it, you are building a health system you are strengthening things at the country level to provide primary care to an entire population."
