GA: AIDS Survival Project to Close at Year's End

GEORGIA:   "AIDS Survival Project to Close at Year's End"
Southern Voice (Atlanta)     (09.19.08):: Laura Douglas-Brown

The member-based, peer-led information and support group AIDS Survival Project announced this week it will cease the majority of its services by year's end due to flagging financial support. After months of discussion, the board for Atlanta's second-oldest HIV organization on Aug. 14 voted unanimously to "close responsibly, knowing that the ability to financially sustain the agency for the long term is just not before us," said Melanie Sovine, ASP's executive director.

Unlike when ASP opened in 1987, today there are many community agencies that HIV-positive people can turn to, Sovine said. "And then we've also been successful against discrimination, folks can live their lives not having to gather for protection inside an agency," she said.

In fiscal years 2007 and 2008, ASP was denied over $200,000 in federal Ryan White support, as the local review committee questioned why its peer-based adherence program was not led by medical professionals. Private grant amounts remained flat for years, while personal giving declined in the lackluster economy, Sovine said.

ASP's full-time staff of four, down from 12 at its peak, will leave by year's end. The testing and referral program targeting African-American women and black men who have sex with men will operate until June 30, 2009, when its five-year CDC grant expires. The program tests over 100 people a month, though it was contracted for only 85, and its seropositivity rate is a "very high" 4-5 percent, Sovine said.

ASP covered almost 40 percent of the rent for the building it shares with Positive Impact and the AIDS Alliance for Faith & Healing, said Positive Impact Executive Director Paul Plate. Plate's agency is working to find a group to plug the rent gap and to see which ASP programs and funding sources it could pick up. ASP's "Thrive! Weekend" workshop to help people cope with a positive diagnosis is available online, and ASP has also helped AIDS Athens and the Northwest Georgia AIDS Alliance to launch programs.