Tag Archives: City Council

Governor Pat Quinn Approves Bill to Create Illinois State Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS Prevention Messages Targeting Youth

Governor Pat Quinn last week approved legislation that creates a new state advisory council to help state government develop effective HIV/AIDS prevention messages targeting youth.

The legislation, House Bill 3974 sponsored by State Representative Cynthia Soto (D-Chicago) and State Senator William Delgado (D-Chicago) would create the Advisory Council on Youth HIV/AIDS Prevention Messages to advise the Illinois Department of Public Health on effective prevention messages to deter youth from engaging in risky behaviors that lead to HIV/AIDS infections.

“The percentage of Illinois HIV/AIDS infections that is represented by youth has been growing enormously over the last eight years, and that growth, in part, represents a failure of HIV/AIDS prevention messages to effectively reach youth” said Cathy Krieger, President & CEO of The Children’s Place Association based in Chicago’s Humboldt Park neighborhood.

“We are grateful to Governor Quinn that he recognizes the problem of youth HIV/AIDS infections and is acting to address the problem.”

On February 27, 2009, at the 2nd annual Illinois Youth & HIV/AIDS Forum sponsored by The Children’s Place Association, the Illinois Department of Public Health presented data that revealed that the youth proportion of reported HIV/AIDS infections in Illinois has grown from 10% in 2000 to 20% in 2008—a 100% increase.

“This is a staggering increase,” said Krieger.

In addition to the IDPH data, new research was presented by Dr. Dexter Voisin, an Associate Professor, University of Chicago School of Social Service Administration that examined the attitudes of Chicago-area college students in seven focus groups, including blacks, Latinos, whites, males, females, and gay men—regarding HIV/AIDS prevention messages.

The research findings revealed all groups reported a significant reduction in the intensity, range, and the length of media messages on HIV prevention and testing over the last 5 years.

More specifically, the research showed that young blacks and Latinos in Chicago tend to distrust most sources of government information on HIV/AIDS prevention. And young Latina women in Chicago fear getting an HIV/AIDS test out of concern that they may be labeled negatively as “fast” women.

Additionally, all respondents said they would be likely to take their parents seriously if they spoke to them about sex and HIV/AIDS transmission.

Of the 50 students who participated in the focus group research—only one had been tested for HIV/AIDS.

“The bottom line is that AIDS awareness initiatives and media prevention messages targeted at young people in Chicago – and African-Americans and Latinos in particular – are not working,” said Krieger. “We think the advisory council approved by Governor Quinn is a good step to address the problem.”

The Children’s Place Association is Illinois’ only child welfare agency exclusively dedicated to the care of HIV/AIDS infected children and families in Illinois.

Via EPR Network
More Government press releases

New Yorkers To March On Washington For Fair Share Of Stimulus Money

City Council Candidate Aaron Fraser is angry at the way in which New Yorkers are being treated in the Federal stimulus package. He will express his ire by leading a citizen’s march on Capitol Hill on March 28, 2009. Marchers will ask politicians to consider New York’s contribution to the overall health of this nation’s economy, which is vastly out of proportion to what the state is being allocated in the stimulus package.

According to Fraser, “I am gravely concerned that New Yorkers will not get their fair share of the stimulus package. That share should reflect our tremendous contribution to this nation’s economy as well as to the world. We have taken the chitterlings from Capitol Hill for far too long. We want a side of beef. Before bridges to nowhere are built; before greedy politicians fill their coffers with cash for their pet projects; the people of New York, you and I, should demand our fair share.”

New York is the hub of international trade and commerce. Aside from being the largest regional economy in the United States, it is home to over 160 different languages and the largest stock exchange in the world. It has commercial real estate worth $802.4 billion and is home to the seventeenth largest economy in the world. New Yorkers contribute over a trillion dollars to this nation’s GDP, which equates to a little over 9% of its total. The City’s budget is larger than the budgets of forty of the U.S. States, including the two U.S. protectorates. The top 25 Fortune 500 companies have headquarters here, not counting others on the exchange who rank lower but have primary offices here. New York is home to half of the 32 largest Chinese corporations.

Aaron Fraser, an Independence Party of America candidate, is running for New York’s 36th District City Council seat, which represents the Brooklyn-Bedford Stuyvesant community.

Via EPR Network
More Government press releases

 

Welcome to EPR Government News

EPR Government News is a new blog, part of EPR Network, that is going to be focused on and will be covering the Government news and stories from press releases published on EPR Network.

EPR Network (EPR stands for express press release) is one of the nation’s largest press release distribution networks on Web. The EPR’s nationwide network includes 12 State based PR sites, one major PR forum and a number of industry specific PR blogs and what started as a hobby on Internet years ago turned out to be a rapidly growing business today. EPR Network is also known as one of the most trusted (human optimized, published, edited and monitored, spam/scam/low quality PR content free) PR sites on the web with more than 10,000 company and individual press releases distributed per month. EPR Network is putting your press releases on top of all major search engines’ results and is reaching thousands of individuals, companies, PR specialists, media professionals, bloggers and journalists every day.

EPR Network has thousands of clients around the world including global 500 corporations like Hilton Hotels, Barclays Bank, AXA Insurance, Tesco UK, eBay/Skype, Emirates, just to name a few. The network’s PR web sites are currently reaching from 150,000 to sometimes 500,000 unique visitors per month while our viral reach could possibly go to as much as 1M people per month through our presence across various social media sites. EPR Network was established in 2004 and as of May 2008 it had more than 800,000 press releases (pages) published on its network.

If you have a press release to be distributed, you can do it over here: press release distribution