Press Release

CONTACT: David Burns

Campus and Community Collaboration: HIV Summit at Prince George's Community College

Washington DC—December 1, 2000—Here's a brief report on the HIV/AIDS Summit held on November 30, 2000 at Prince George's Community College in Largo, Maryland. PGCC is one of five current "leadership node partners" in AAC&U's Program for Health and Higher Education.

Originally scheduled for September, the Summit had to be cancelled due to a campus water main break. In spite of the inconvenience and extra work that the cancellation caused, more than one person in attendance mentioned that, in re-scheduling the Summit for the week in which World AIDS Day -- December 1, PGCC was managing to call even greater attention to the Summit's importance.

The Summit brought together representatives from the public school system, the community college, the county's health department, and representatives of CBOs (ranging from AIDS Service providers to representatives of Parent-Teachers Organizations). Its main purpose was to explore how a concerted, collaborative effort might help meet national, state, and local objectives to reduce HIV.

Reducing HIV disease is no small matter for Maryland and Prince George's County. Maryland has the fourth highest rate of HIV, nationally, and PG County the second highest rate in MD-Baltimore County has first place.(Every 4 hours, another Marylander is infected with HIV, we were told.) Maryland's epidemic is rooted primarily in the injecting drug using community, including the sexual partners of IV drug users. Ironically-or perhaps fortuitously-the Summit occurred in the shadow of a decision by the PG County Commissioners to reject, by a 5-3 vote, a needle exchange program that had been recommended by -- and would have been funded by -- the state health department. This decision, keynote speaker Dr. Liza Solomon, Maryland's director of AIDS administration, said "will tragically cost lives." Dr. Solomon used the occasion to explore the politics of this decision (itself a painful case where what is "scientifically" shown to be effective fails to become public policy). Solomon's remarks and the Summit were newsworthy, and made the news as TV and print media were in attendance.

The Summit was organized by two remarkable women, PGCC faculty members, Kathi Linville and Marie York. They were supported by a planning committee that included college and community representatives, as well as other PHHE partners, including Prof. Mitzi Mabe of UMBC, among others. AAC&U contributed a modest planning grant.

Approximately 200 people (including at least 60 students) attended, a fact that gratified the planners enormously. Dr. Ron Williams, PGCC's president and AAC&U's treasurer, welcomed the participants. Beyond giving the usual "president's welcome," Williams talked about his own interest and commitment to working to reduce HIV. First, he said he had committed the college to working on PG County's biggest problems-and HIV is surely one of them. More personally, Williams spoke of his own losses of friends and colleagues, and called attention to the disease and infection rates in the Caribbean and his native Barbados that are, of course, troubling. In addition, he mentioned his family's business interests in West Africa that are also impacted by HIV. He also reported on his work with AAC&U and told the audience that PGCC had taken a "leadership role among community colleges" by distributing copies of Learning for Our Common Health to other community college presidents in high HIV impact SMSAs.

Barton Gellman, the Washington Post reporter who has so powerfully brought attention to the HIV crisis, particularly in its African manifestation, was scheduled to have been the keynote speaker for the September meeting, but was unable to attend this one. Fortunately, however, he provided a copy of his quite remarkable address to the Summit planners, who were able to duplicate the paper for general distribution. (It is of such clarity and importance that we are asking his permission to post it to the PHHE web site). Gellman's purpose was to explore what it means for the US to be declaring that HIV is not simply a health crisis, but to consider what it means for HIV to have been declared "a national security threat," as well.

The planners wanted to focus attention locally. In choosing Gellman to internationalize the issue as well, they sought to put this issue in an even larger (but still locally-connected) context. The wisdom of this was demonstrated in the small group breakout sessions. In one, a powerful PGCC student from Cameroon spoke of the connections she saw between what is happening in PG County and in her native land, where she says every family she knows has lost at least one family member to HIV. This got "localized" when the issue of "embarrassment" came up (introduced by a woman who works in a hospice setting). She talked about embarrassment as a barrier to dealing with HIV in both the US and elsewhere. "The shame of disease only makes us all sicker," one person said. For many participating, this was one of those "breakthrough" moments -- the kind of thing that happens when one genuinely works to understand something that seemed almost "irrelevant" or beside the point when it was first mentioned, but, upon further reflection, really becomes the seminal point.

It's too early to tell if the Summit will achieve its main purpose. In work to follow, the challenge will be to develop a clear plan to strengthen the linkages originally intended. Considered as a one-day event, however, the Summit did succeed in doing something of enormous value. The Summit was a wonderful example of -- and experience in -- grass roots democracy. It was civic engagement on a complex, contentious issue, sponsored by the community's college. It was scholars working with community workers. It was high-minded while at the same time deeply-rooted in the daily experiences of peoples' lives. Above all, it was a very good beginning.

The challenge for PGCC and PHHE is to find a ways to sustain and nurture the development of this Summit and to make room for the spirit of this kind of engagement to flourish.

What does this have to do with liberal education? Well, at the "high falutin'" level, you could say that the day was a day of "education for human freedom." Not only were people free to think and work together, but they were also-thanks to the scholarship of the presenters and the practical knowledge of the participants-made more powerful and freed from misconceptions and patterns of bad thinking. More practically, however, something quite useful happened. "Health education" in its traditional sense is "mandated" for all students in PG county school system. This mandate, however, translates into about 10 minutes per day, if one averages it, devoted to health. But even this meager "allocation" is shrinking to accommodate the need to insure that the "state-mandated" subjects (that will be measured in "high stakes" tests) are "covered." So there's no place for health, Summit participants were told, when you have to make room for what will be tested: English, math, history, and social studies. Well, that's where liberal education comes in, and, thanks to some member of the audience mentioning the curricular integration work at Frostburg (another Maryland college) and UMBC, the idea of teaching about HIV and health while one is teaching writing, or statistics, or history, or public policy was mentioned. That strategy served as a galvanizing conclusion to the day's events. It wasn't health or some other education, but health in education that seemed to make sense to people. For PHHE, this was, of course, quite gratifying. Examples of the use of this integrative strategy attracted a good deal of attention and interest. It seems pretty clear that the "Learning for Our Common Health" approach is a direction many of the participants will try to pursue. And, of course, PHHE will try to provide whatever help it can.

This is written on is World AIDS Day, a day on which we are invited to remember and to pause to think about what each of us can do, in our own quiet or not-so-quiet ways, to engage with this world-wide holocaust of unprecedented historic proportion. With 33 million (or more) people infected, whole continents threatened, millions of children orphaned, and our own lives robbed of precious friends, there is much that we need to do. If each of us can find a way to make or to expand our personal commitments, as those who participated in the PGCC Summit did, then our efforts, added to those of others, will make a difference. To those who are already putting their talents and energies in this direction, especially those who organized and attended the PGCC Summit, a debt of thanks is owed.

For more information on HIV and Higher Education, see the PHHE home page.

Revised January 2001