ACoRN's Mock Wins Award

[Guest guest]

ACoRN's Mock Wins Award

by Euan Bear Lebanon, NH – In an ironic twist of funding fate, Tom Mock, director of A Community Response Network (ACoRN) of New Hampshire and Vermont, was recognized in late May for his Community Health Leadership by the Wood Foundation and awarded $120,000. It was just last fall that the Vermont Department of Health declined to pass along to ACoRN any of its CDC grant monies, putting a big hole in the agency’s finances. "Of course it’s wonderful to be acknowledged in this way," Mock said in a phone interview. "If you believe in karma, you could look at it this way: Kurt [Kleier, Vermont's then-AIDS chief] got fired and I got a national award." (According to a report in the Valley News, Mock was eventually able to convince VDH to locate $28,000 in other grant funding, which may well be supplemented by an additional appropriation from the Vermont legislature for AIDS prevention. Further, New Hampshire awarded the agency $53,000, an increase of $12,000 over last year's grant.) Mock receives $15,000 of the award for his personal use. He said he hasn't decided yet how to apply the other $105,000. "I'm going to DC next week for a week, meeting to share ideas with 30 award winners – this year's 10 and the awardees from the previous two years - before I decide. I'm going to take my time to think about how best to use these funds, and take advantage of the technical assistance at Wood [Foundation]." The terms of the award allow the monies to be spent over a three-year period. Among the other meetings Mock planned to attend were those set up by the foundation's "Project Connect" with New Hampshire's members of Congress. "I was nominated from New Hampshire, even though we serve as many clients in Vermont, but [Project Connect] didn't realize that until I called and asked them to set me up with Vermont, too. They said they would get me a meeting with [Vermont Congressman] Bernie []." In those meetings, Mock said he planned to ask the politicians, "'Will you come to an ACoRN event?' This is one way to bring some light back to AIDS," Mock added, citing the way AIDS stories - the personal stories about how it is to live with the disease - have nearly disappeared from the media. Mock will also use some of his newfound leverage to get New Hampshire lawmakers to designate Hepatitis C as a reportable disease. ACoRN decided last year to extend the agency's services to include people living with HCV, or Hep-C. According to Mock, "26,000 people are infected with Hep-C in New Hampshire, and there’s no real treatment or outreach." And no national funding for research or testing. Dunham, a national program director for the Wood Foundation, said that outreach, that expansion of mission and services beyond HIV/AIDS to Hepatitis C, was part of what made Tom Mock and ACoRN stand out among the 600 other nominees, of which about a quarter were AIDS-related service organizations. "It had to do with how the work persisted through ups and downs and adapted for its community," Dunham explained in a phone interview from Boston. And it was "Tom's devotion as first a volunteer and then making an investment when the organization was having difficulties, then stretching out to address Hepatitis C. The national committee was very impressed." The foundation is not, she said, recognizing "Lone Rangers," but whole organizations, especially, as here, "organizations that are overwhelmed from their original tasks and mission but then say 'Let's take on another task.' And it's driven by the need in the community. There came a point when they were losing more clients to Hep C than to HIV/AIDS." In order to get researchers interested in a treatment or a cure, "we need statistics," Mock explained. "Hep C is the most prevalent blood-borne pandemic in the world right now. It's estimated that 1.4 million people are infected with AIDS/HIV in this country. There are 5 to 10 million with Hep-C." And many of those people do not know they are infected. "A lot of people got infected just by getting a tattoo, in the days before we went into the parlors and insisted on clean needles because of AIDS. Little did we know that Hep-C was alive in the ink vats," Mock said. Tattoo artists now use individual vials of ink for each customer.Further, Mock declared, "Hepatitis C is the leading cause of the need for liver transplants." Tom Mock first got involved in HIV/AIDS work when he was counseling young hemophiliacs who had contracted the virus through blood transfusions. When he began speaking out against the prejudice they and their families faced, some physicians stopped referring patients to Mock. "Undaunted, he became Executive Director of ACORN, which had been struggling financially. Within a year, he had succeeded in winning back the full support and respect of the state agencies that funded the organization, increased the staff to seven, and quadrupled the budget," according to the official press release announcing the award. Chambers, a gay member of the ACoRN board of directors, nominated Mock for the award. He noted that Mock, straight, married and with five children, including his own and his wife’s from their prior marriages, had gained the trust of the gay community in dealing with the AIDS crisis. ACoRN provides HIV/AIDS services throughout the rural counties of Grafton and Sullivan in New Hampshire, and Windsor and Orange in Vermont - low-income areas with limited public transportation, where people with AIDS can easily become isolated. ACoRN also offers assistance with housing, food and transportation.

http://www.mountainpridemedia.org/oitm/issues/2005/07jul2005/fea01_acorn.htm