Rather than our routine HIV care, we increasingly need comprehensive multidisciplinary services to match our more complex needs. Even in middle age, we need a more aggressive approach to screening, diagnosis, and management of many conditions associated with aging.
The firebrand activist Jules Levin of the National AIDS Treatment Advocacy Project (NATAP) has been broadcasting this message for years now—sounding the alarm that we, the aging HIV community, are headed for a services gap. Based upon study after study documenting rates of frailty, aging-related complications, and disability among people living with HIV that are much higher than what is seen in people of the same chronological age in the general population, he believes that HIV care systems are totally unprepared to provide the services many of us will need.
His warnings seem to be falling on deaf ears, due at least partly to ageism and denial. People don’t like to think about all the ailments associated with "growing...
More Stories
Revisiting the Lavender Scare
Bruce and James
To Boldly Go Homo: An Exhibit Review