Community Unites for Town Meeting on Global AIDS and Human Rights
Posted on Friday, Dec 5, 2008 at 5:42 pm by Ben Greenberg
December 5, 2008
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Senator Ted Kennedy To Be Honored for Leadership on Right to Health
BOSTON, Dec. 5, 2008 — On Monday, Dec. 8, at Harvard Medical School in Boston, community members and experts join for a landmark town meeting titled “HIV/AIDS and the Right to Health: Leadership in the U.S. and Globally.” The event, which commemorates World AIDS Day and the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, is underwritten by Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) through the generosity of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and is co-organized by PHR, AIDS Action Committee of Massachusetts (AAC), Partners In Health, and the François-Xavier Bagnoud (FXB) Center for Health and Human Rights. More than 69 New England organizations, hospitals, and universities have signed on as event co-sponsors. With over 800 RSVPs to date at http://physiciansforhumanrights/udhr, event planners expect at least 500 in attendance.
HIV/AIDS experts, human rights advocates, community leaders, health professionals and students, and elected officials will discuss the current state of efforts to combat the AIDS pandemic both internationally and domestically — what has succeeded, what has failed and what must happen now.
Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino will open the event. PHR CEO Frank Donaghue will co-moderate the event, issue PHR’s “Call to President-Elect Obama To Fulfill the Promise of Universal Human Rights,” and present PHR’s Award for Outstanding Leadership on the Right to Health to Senator Edward Kennedy (D-MA). Joseph P. Kennedy III, the grandson of Robert F. Kennedy and great-nephew of Edward Kennedy, will accept the award on the senator’s behalf. Senator John Kerry (D-MA) will present a keynote address via video.
Expert presenters include: Rev. Gloria White-Hammond, M.D., Co-Pastor of Bethel A.M.E Church, Director of Sisterhood For Peace and Chairwoman of Save Darfur Coalition; Rebecca Haag, President and CEO of AIDS Action Committee of Massachusetts and Executive Director of AIDS Action Council in Washington, DC and one of the chief architects and leaders who called for a National AIDS Strategy for the U.S.; and Jim Yong Kim, M.D., Director of Francois-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights and Chair of the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School. The meeting’s co-moderator will be Pat Daoust, MSN, RN, Director of PHR’s Health Action AIDS Campaign.
The Dec. 8, 12-1:30 p.m. town meeting – including a discussion and question and answer period – will take place at the Joseph B. Martin Conference Center at Harvard Medical School, 77 Avenue Louis Pasteur in Boston. A reception, Community Action Fair, and refreshments will immediately follow the program.
