If you want some perspective on how long the Colorado AIDS Project has served the community, consider this: It was founded at a time when “AIDS” was not yet the official name of the disease.
In 1983, AIDS was still often called Gay-Related Immune Deficiency in many circles, including medical ones. The burgeoning epidemic was that new.
“We started as a project of the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual & Transgender Center to give people something to do about this disease ravaging the gay community,” said Michael Lee, who runs prevention services for the Colorado AIDS Project and serves as the group’s spokesman. “One of our first efforts was creating a buddy program. At that time, a lot of AIDS patients had family and friends turn their backs on them.”
The Denver-based organization has grown in the past quarter-century, even as public awareness and new drugs have raised hope that the disease can be contained and perhaps one day even cured.
Not that the problem is going away any time soon.
The AIDS Project served 2,100 Coloradans in 2008 diagnosed with either AIDS or HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.
As of July 1, there were 4,658 people diagnosed with AIDS living in Colorado and 6,138 with HIV diagnoses. Given that one out of five people in the United States with HIV don’t know it, the combined AIDS/HIV cases in the state is probably between 13,000 to 14,000, Lee said.
As treatments have changed, so has the Colorado AIDS Project’s mission. What started out as a die-with- dignity and prevention program has evolved.
The group offers an array of help: housing assistance such as rent subsidies, nutritional services, a food bank, transportation, mental-health services and diagnostic clinics.
The Colorado AIDS project has a $6 million annual budget, with $4.6 million coming from government grants. Donations from private charities such as the Gill Foundation also underwrite programs.
The education component remains a top priority. Lee said that 70 percent of Colorado AIDS cases result from men having sex with men — many of them black and Latino males who don’t view themselves as gay because of the stigma within their cultures.
“Outreach to those communities is so important,” he said. “We have clinics where people can go and discreetly find out their health status. That’s huge, just knowing your status.”
Although AIDS crosses gender lines, the majority of sufferers in the United States are male.
“We try to work from within the gay community,” Lee said. “We’re patterned after the women’s health movement of the 1960s and 1970s. Men are best equipped to take ownership of their health, so educating them is critical.”
William Porter: 303-954-1877 or wporter@denverpost.com
