To Treat Me, You Have To Know Me

From the city of New York.

Chicago's LGBT Health Center Facing Closure Over Financial Mismanagement

Chicago's Howard Brown Center, which provides health services to the city's LGBT community, is facing closure over alleged financial mismanagement by the organization's top officers. The Chicago Tribune reports:

Jamal Edwards — who was appointed president and CEO of Howard Brown in June after two top executives were dismissed — said the Lakeview-based center needs to raise $500,000 before the end of the year or it may cease operations. Edwards said more than $3 million in grant funds — part of the Multicenter AIDS Cohort Study, or MACS, which has tracked thousands of men infected with HIV since the mid-1980s — were mishandled between 2006 and March of this year. An internal review conducted by the center found that some of the grant money was used to cover general operating expenses at Howard Brown, Edwards said. The National Institutes of Health launched an investigation into the financial problems and has referred the matter to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' office of inspector general.

The Center provides primary health services to over 6000 LGBT Chicagoans, many of whom with HIV and AIDS.

HEALTH STUDY: Gay Men Are Thinner

According to a study just released by researchers in Boston, gay men are 50% less likely to be obese than straight men. But lesbians are more likely to be overweight than straight women.

After scrutinizing a health survey of more than 67,000 Massachusetts residents between the ages of 18 and 64, the researchers found that 14 percent of gay men were obese versus 21 percent of straight men. The opposite was true of gay women: 26 percent were found to be obese, as compared with 17 percent of the straight women. The researchers also found that both gay men and gay women were more likely to be current smokers compared to their heterosexual counterparts. And gay women were more likely to have multiple heart disease risk factors than straight women.

Earlier studies that looked at health in the gay community focused mostly on sexually transmitted diseases and mental health, rather than on chronic illnesses like obesity and heart disease, says the study’s lead author Kerith Conron, an associate research scientist at Northeastern University and a research fellow at the Harvard School of Public Health. “This may mean that we in the public health community need to come up with more tailored messages to reach these groups, just as car dealers do when they want to reach a specific target audience,” she said. Conron suspects that cultural differences might at least partly explain the weight divide. It may be more acceptable in the lesbian community for women to be full-sized, she said.

The differences may be more tied up in male/female differences, rather than gay/straight, according to one scientist who says, "People in sexual relationships with men — heterosexual women and gay men — get more pressure to look thin and to otherwise conform to attractiveness norms than do people in sexual relationships with women — lesbians and heterosexual men."

San Francisco Endorses New HIV Strategy: Begin HAART Therapy Immediately

Many HIV+ patients delay beginning anti-retroviral therapy for years after they become aware of their infection, waiting for signs that their immune system has begun to falter before starting treatment. San Francisco's Department of Health has just endorsed starting HAART treatment immediately upon diagnosis.

Behind the policy switch is mounting evidence that patients who start early are more likely to live longer, and less likely to suffer a variety of ailments — including heart disease, kidney failure and cancer — that plague long-term survivors. Studies suggest that in the early years of infection, when a patient may show few signs of immune system failure, the virus is in fact causing permanent damage that becomes evident later. For instance, in older patients who finally start taking the drugs, the effects of chronic inflammation take their toll. “The impact on health risk is comparable to that of diabetes,” said Dr. Steven G. Deeks, a researcher at the University of California, San Francisco.

“Their immune system may look like that of someone 30 years older.” Dr. Diane V. Havlir, chief of the H.I.V./AIDS division at San Francisco General Hospital, said the new policy was already in effect for her patients. Although a decision whether or not to take the medicine rests with the patient, all those testing positive for H.I.V. will be offered combination therapy, with advice to pursue it. “The history of H.I.V. disease has always been about change,” she said. “We pride ourselves on working quickly with new data.”

Today's HIV drugs are far, far less toxic than those available when HAART therapy first became available almost 15 years ago, but they are still very tough on some patients and their long-term side effects won't be known for decades. Some San Francisco-based HIV specialists quoted in the above-linked story strongly oppose the city's new directive.

(Tipped by JMG reader Ru)