Southern States Manifesto

When we started in 2001, the HIV epidemic in the South was largely ignored. In those early years, we were just a handful of extraordinary advocates working together to demand more resources to address the HIV and AIDS state of emergency in our states. We assembled a number of case studies and released the first-ever Southern States Manifesto in 2002. These case studies were presented nationwide, garnering national attention from the media, funders, and policymakers.

The next iteration of the manifesto was not released until six years later in 2008. This update described what HIV looked like in the South, six years after our first efforts brought us together in a dynamic way to achieve mutually desired public health outcomes through what has become a solid collaboration. This report is released after the conclusion of the first year of the Ryan White HIV/AIDS Treatment Modernization Act of 2006 (RWHATMA) and of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) testing guidelines, Revised Recommendations for HIV Testing of Adults, Adolescents, and Pregnant Women in Health Care Settings. These two important policy events and the continued burgeoning need in the South present an opportunity to merge these critical and new advances to focus on very accomplishable goals.

The last report was released in 2012. In 2012, SAC witnessed historic progress including the enactment of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the implementation of the first-ever National HIV/AIDS Strategy (NHAS), the HIV Prevention Trials Network 052 that indicated the importance of adherence as a means of stopping transmission, and a historical change in the HIV prevention funding formula so that funds are based on living HIV cases rather than AIDS data.