Teen HIV/AIDS Awareness Day to Be Observed in Pittsburgh March 29

PITTSBURGH—As part of the fifth-annual Educating Teens about HIV/AIDS Month, Teen HIV/AIDS Awareness Day will be held Tuesday, March 29, from

9 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center, featuring speaker Beny J. Primm, executive director of the Addiction Research and Treatment Corporation and president of the Urban Resource Institute in New York City.

For the first time, events to mark Teen HIV/AIDS Awareness Day also will be held across Pennsylvania: On March 30, Art Williams, a physician at the Hamilton Health Center, and Pennsylvania State Representative Thaddeus Kirkland will speak at the State Museum of Pennsylvania in Harrisburg, and on March 31, Deborah McGregor, a retired physician working in the area of HIV/AIDS, will speak at Thomas Jefferson University's Bluemele Life Sciences Building in Philadelphia. Both events will take place from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m.

The number of teenagers infected with HIV is growing: According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, young people ages 15-24 accounted for half of all new HIV infections worldwide in 2003, and more than 6,000 teenagers become infected with HIV every day.

Educating Teens about HIV/AIDS Month serves to spearhead a community effort to encourage schools, churches, and community groups to plan programs to educate teens about HIV/AIDS during the month of March.

Members of the Educating Teens about HIV/AIDS advisory committee include Stephen B. Thomas, Philip Hallen Professor of Community Health and Social Justice and director of Pitt's Center for Minority Health; Robert Hill, Pitt vice chancellor for public affairs; Robert Connamacher, outreach coordinator for Pitt's School of Medicine; and Margaret Larkins-Pettigrew, assistant professor in the School of Medicine's Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Reproductive Sciences.

Educating Teens about HIV/AIDS Month was created in 2000 as part of Kezia Ellison's service-learning project for the Pennsylvania Governor's School of Excellence for Health Care. "A little more than five years ago, I was a high school student appalled by the devastation of HIV/AIDS and determined to start a project in my community to educate students about HIV/AIDS," said Ellison, now a senior at Brown University in Providence, R.I. "The decision to continue my service-learning project was easy, because the need for HIV/AIDS education is still crucial."

For more information, contact committee chair Albertha Graham-Ellison at

412-231-1821 or DRG83AGE@aol.com, or Kezia Ellison at Kezia_Ellison@Brown.edu.

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