"Women, Power and HIV/AIDS" Conference at Yale April 6

To address the staggering rise in HIV/AIDS among women and girls in every region of the world, the Yale University Center for Interdisciplinary Research on AIDS (CIRA) will hold a conference Thursday, April 6, at the Omni New Haven Hotel at Yale, 155 Temple St. from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.

To address the staggering rise in HIV/AIDS among women and girls in every region of the world, the Yale University Center for Interdisciplinary Research on AIDS (CIRA) will hold a conference Thursday, April 6, at the Omni New Haven Hotel at Yale, 155 Temple St. from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.

CIRA, part of the Department of Epidemiology and Public Health at Yale School of Medicine, seeks to promote discussion and further research about the ways that gender inequality manifests itself in contemporary society and is, in turn, associated with HIV in women. The conference will focus on the gender aspects of large-scale social disruptions, as well as the gender dimensions of drug use, with a focus on crack cocaine.

The conference will also address some approaches to HIV prevention that involve women’s controlled methods, including microbicides and the female condom, and discuss how to include men in struggles for gender equality.

Women comprise almost half of all adults living with HIV today and in the last two years the proportion of women and girls living with HIV has increased in every region of the world, especially in Eastern Europe, Asia and Latin America. In sub-Saharan Africa, women comprise nearly 60 percent of adults living with HIV.

“Effective HIV prevention for women requires understanding how women’s risk for HIV/AIDS is rooted in social inequality and power differences between the sexes,” said Director of CIRA, Michael Merson, M.D., the Anna M.R. Lauder Professor of Public Health in the Department of Epidemiology and Public Health at Yale. “The pursuit of HIV prevention for women is deeply embedded in the struggle for gender equality.”

Conference topics include: “Social Upheaval, Gender and HIV Risk,” “Sex, Work and HIV,” “Women Controlled HIV Prevention Methods,” and “In Pursuit of Gender Equality: The Place of Men.”

In addition to Merson, other Yale speakers include Karina Danvers of the Yale School of Nursing and director of the Connecticut AIDS Education & Training Center, located at the Yale School of Nursing; Kathleen Sikkema, associate professor in the Department of Epidemiology and Public Health; and Laurie Sylla, research projects director of the Yale AIDS Program.

Other speakers are from the Office of the UN Secretary-General’s Special Envoy for AIDS in Africa; The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; Institute for Community Research; Columbia University; Johns Hopkins University; SUNY Upstate Medical University; Instituto Promundo in Brazil; Hunter College Center for Community and Urban Health; the Center for AIDS Intervention Research at the Medical College of Wisconsin; and the Global Campaign for Microbicides.

Please visit “Women, Power and HIV/AIDS” online for additional information.

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Media Contact

Karen N. Peart: karen.peart@yale.edu, 203-980-2222