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Catholic Charities AIDS Services of the Albany Diocese now serves patients with no medical insurance.

The agency was among 41 organizations that received grants from the AIDS Institute of the New York State Department of Health to provide supportive services to persons living with HIV and AIDS four months ago.

With a grant of $140,000, diocesan Catholic Charities has been able to expand its supportive case management services, add psychosocial services in rural areas of the Diocese and hire a Spanish interpreter to accompany patients to medical appointments. An annual grant of more than $180,000 will start next spring and last for four years.

Catholic Charities AIDS Services has been helping residents in 11 counties of the Diocese since the start of the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s. Services have included intensive case management, community outreach and service access, emergency financial assistance and personal care items.

HIV history
HIV is a virus that can cause AIDS, an affliction that weakens the body's immune system and causes cancer or serious infections. Together, HIV and AIDS have killed more than 550,000 Americans, according to the National Center for HIV/AIDS, Viral Hepatitis, STD and TB Prevention. Today, about 1.1 million people in the U.S. live with HIV; about one-fifth of them are unaware of their infection.

AIDS diagnoses in New York state surpassed the national average in 2008, according to AVERT, an international AIDS and HIV charity.

Since the beginning of the epidemic, more than 2,500 people in the cities of Albany, Schenectady and Troy were diagnosed.

This is far fewer than in New York City, where more than 214,000 cases have been diagnosed, but diocesan Catholic Charities' caseload continues to grow, said Keith Brown, associate executive director of the AIDS Services program.

Patients no longer eligible for Medicaid still require help, he added: "Folks still have needs, regardless of their insurance situation."

Through the new, expanded supportive case management services, caseworkers will help clients travel to appointments or secure medications. Patients who work for a living can get help securing housing, taking care of children or monitoring their mental health. "It's one more step in the continuum of self-reliance," Mr. Brown explained.

The linguistic piece of the new service involves partnering with Utica-based MAMI (the Multicultural Association of Medical Interpreters) to train community members in multilingual medical translations.

Aside from Spanish, Mr. Brown predicts a need for French and Burmese interpreters. MAMI seeks a registered nurse to instruct the staff in anatomy, physiology and the healthcare system.

Catholic Charities AIDS Services also recently hired a part-time support group facilitator to collaborate with Positive Connections, a volunteer group in Oneonta. Catskill Rural AIDS Services, which served Delaware, Otsego and Schoharie Counties, left a gap in those services when it closed in 2008.

The volunteer group will aim to empower people with knowledge about medication adherence, becoming active in one's own medical care, accessing services, finding housing and preventing substance abuse.

Rural areas in the Capital District continue to struggle with access to services because of transportation and a lack of specialists, said Shannon Mason, coordinator of the Ryan White HIV Care Network of Northeastern New York, a planning consortium which recommends service ideas to state officials.

Chronic illness
Another problem is that HIV is becoming more and more known as a chronic but manageable disease, she said, making it harder to justify the need for intensive services and making it less likely that people will seek out testing or treatment.

"Because people are living healthier, longer lives, because there is treatment, you aren't seeing people with the classical symptoms of AIDS," Ms. Mason said, but that doesn't mean AIDS has disappeared.

The Ryan White HIV Care Network reported 69 new cases of AIDS in the Albany area last year. The network coordinated a ceremony at The College of Saint Rose in Albany for World AIDS Day this week to promote awareness and tolerance; local, longtime survivors of AIDS were invited.

"They've witnessed the epidemic. They've witnessed their friends and people around them passing away," Ms. Mason noted. "People don't remember that, so the activism that once was is no longer."

Ms. Mason's organization, along with the 11 similar organizations in New York State, will close at the end of the year because of state funding losses. Other organizations have seen declines in grant amounts in recent years.

This is compounded by the fact that a large percent of infected people are already low-income, and the majority are older than 45 or 50. Since HIV/AIDS can accelerate the aging process, nursing and long-term care will be serious concerns, Ms. Mason said.

The virus "is still here and it is still infecting people," she said. "If we let up on the prevention and the public awareness, it is going to come back and forth."

(For information on Catholic Charities AIDS Services, call 449-3581 or 382-2969.)

(12/02/10) [[In-content Ad]]

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