Advocacy for dual protection and the female condom

[Guest guest]

Dear Friends,

Over the next few years, the Center for Health and Gender Equity will be

working to advocate for increased focus on gender sensitive STI/HIV

prevention strategies within U.S. international policies and programs and

within the agendas of international donor agencies. Our main priorities

will be to:

Increase U.S. international investment in STI and HIV prevention

strategies as part of the continuum of prevention, care and treatment;

Conduct analyses of U.S.-supported international donor programs in

key countries;

Advocate for increased U.S. funding of efforts that focus on

sexuality education and efforts to increase women's negotiating power in

sexual and reproductive decisions, to change social norms that increase

women's risks, and create equitable partnerships between women and men;

Advocate for the expansion of dual protection strategies within both

family planning and STI/HIV prevention programs such that women can

simultaneously protect themselves from both unwanted pregnancy and infection;

Increase U.S. funding for the female condom, and advocate for greatly

expanded access to and use of both female and male condoms both at the

international and national levels.

At UNGASS, we held a briefing on dual protection and the female condom

featuring a number of speakers, including Suman Mehta from UNFPA;

Cleaves of UNAIDS; Alice Lampthey of SWAA-Ghana; Warren of the

Female Health Foundation (maker of the female condom); and Radium

Bhattacharya of INN-India.

We are currently in the process of developing a more refined set of

detailed briefing sheets and other materials on gender sensitive STI and

HIV prevention strategies; U.S. policies; dual protection strategies; and

the female condom, among other things. We will circulate these as soon as

they are available. We also will be launching a new website later this

summer on which these materials will be posted.

Meanwhile, we also are interested in building a data base of key contacts

on these issues. If you are already working on these issues, or are

interested in working on or learning more about them, we would love to be

in touch. Please send us your full contact information (including regular

and email addresses, etc), to both myself and Benton at the Center for

Health and Gender Equity. Our email addresses are:

jjacobson@..., and abenton@.... We also can

eventually make this database available to everyone on our website so that

others can use it too. We look forward to hearing from you,

Sincerely,

Jodi L. son, Executive Director

Center for Health and Gender Equity (CHANGE)

6930 Carroll Avenue

Suite 910

Takoma Park, land 20912 USA

Phone: (301) 270-1182

Fax: (301) 270-2052

www.genderhealth.org

e-mail: jjacobson@...