Welcome to AIDS Action's Virtual Tour of AIDS public policy on the Web. As the National Voice on AIDS, AIDS Action is the foremost national AIDS policy organization and our team of AIDS policy experts is the largest in Washington, D.C. We represent 3,200 of America's leading AIDS service providers and all Americans affected by HIV/AIDS.

We work with decision-makers on the Hill, in the Clinton Administration and within the scientific and medical community to ensure a fair and equitable national AIDS policy.

One of the best ways to keep track of House and Senate votes on AIDS issues is through the THOMAS Website. For AIDS Action's voting ratings on individual members of Congress, go to the 105th Congress Voting record.

This tour will provide an overview of the many outstanding AIDS policy information pages throughout the vast network of AIDS Web sites. As always, AIDS Action's Web site is one of the best places to go on the Web for consistently updated information about AIDS policy.

One of the best ways to keep up-to-date on AIDS policy news is to visit the Kaiser Family Foundation HIV/AIDS Daily Report. Updated mid-morning every business day, the Daily Report provides a summary of major AIDS news stories from around the nation in a concise and readable format. The Daily Report is a bookmark in the browser of every serious AIDS advocacy professional and layman alike, and we strongly encourage everyone concerned about the fight against AIDS to visit Kaiser's site often.

Keeping up with the latest news is important, but so is the history of AIDS advocacy. Indeed, our community has come a long way since the first days of the epidemic. This year's passage of a record $4 billion in federal funding for AIDS programs contrasts sharply with a president who wouldn't even utter the word "AIDS" in public during the first critical years of the epidemic.

The denial of the early days was paired with the hopelessness that and an HIV diagnosis brought. Today, we have strong support for the fight against AIDS - both Democrats and Republicans - and the advent of new treatments has, for the first time, injected hope into the lives of thousands of Americans living with HIV/AIDS. An outstanding Web resource for information on the new treatments is the HIV InSITE Web site.

Still, there is a great deal of work that needs to be done. While America's investment in research has paid off through new treatments and lower death rates, our divestment from HIV prevention and education has resulted in a new wave of HIV infections among young people, women and minority communities.

Indeed, of the 40,000 new HIV infections every year, half are among people under twenty-five.

AIDS Action is leading the advocacy effort to reinvigorate HIV prevention and education. AIDS Action's Virtual Vaccine prevention plan is one of the most ambitious prevention plans today. As part of the plan, we are working to increase funding and effectiveness at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the leading agency for America's fight against communicable diseases.

The AIDS advocacy community is also fighting the epidemic of substance abuse, a leading accomplice to HIV infection. While we lost an effort to get HIV-tainted needles off our streets through federal funding for needle exchange programs, we are pleased by recent increases in the Substance Abuse Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), which will help people break their addiction.

For people living with HIV, there is nothing more important than access to quality health care and quality living conditions. Indeed, it is a tragedy that current federal policy denies low-income HIV-positive Americans access to Medicaid and AIDS-preventing drugs until they develop AIDS. One of AIDS Action's top legislative priorities is to modernize Medicaid to ensure that all HIV-positive individuals get access to drug treatment and medical care before AIDS sets in, not after. For more information, see AIDS Action's Reinventing Medicaid. For information on Medicaid in general go to the Medicaid/HIV Fact Sheet.

The AIDS advocacy community also fights to ensure that people living with HIV have access to proper housing and nutrition. Since many AIDS drugs require refrigeration, access to housing are as important for adherence to AIDS drugs as are access to a pharmacy and a cup of water. The Housing Opportunities for People with AIDS Program (HOPWA) is a critical federal program that ensures that people living with AIDS have access to housing.

Tragically, discrimination has always been an accomplice to AIDS. We have made real strides in the effort to ensure that people with AIDS have to fight only the virus, not unfair discrimination as well. This spring, the Supreme Court in Bragdon v. Abbott decided that discrimination against all people with HIV disease was illegal.

The AIDS advocacy community is also fighting to ensure that state and national testing policies encourage the estimated 300,000 HIV-positive Americans who are unaware of their status to get tested. As many states move toward public health plans that require testing sites to report all HIV cases to the state, we are working for plans that use code-based reporting, rather than actual names.

Finally, the best weapon in the fight against AIDS is leadership. You can help in the fight against AIDS by joining AIDS Action as a member. Membership includes a free subscription to our newsletter and an AIDS Action lapel pin.

Thank you for your interest in AIDS policy and taking part in the Day Without Art Policy Web Tour. Most important, thank you for your commitment to the fight against AIDS, until it's over.