MA HEP Patient Empowerment Project

In addition to supporting greater participation by the patient community in hepatitis advocacy, MaHepPEP has taken the lead in calling for a more balanced, integrated, and comprehensive response to infectious disease. We believe it is a national tragedy that viral hepatitis is now the leading cause of death among people HIV co-infected, and that most AIDS organizations failed to respond in a timely way because co-infection occurs primarily among it’s most marginalized constituency – people with a history of injection drug use.

Only recently have some mainstream AIDS organizations, like the San Francisco-based Project Inform, taken initiative on HCV, in part to insure control of future HCV funding, but mainly to insure continued control over the infectious disease agenda even as HCV mortality rates far eclipse those for HIVAIDS in the coming years. Once again, the same people who so poorly represented those of us with substance abuse risk factors (but did an enviable job in de-stigmatizing sexual risk factors..), and downplayed the HCV epidemic in the past, are now taking leadership of HCV advocacy through pharmaceutical funded and driven organizations like the National Viral Hepatitis Roundtable and the Hepatitis C Advocates United, organizations who's leadership do not represent the diversity of the HCV patient community.

MaHepPEP is dedicated to fighting the stigma associated with infectious disease and drug use, and advocates for hepatitis-specific treatment, research, and prevention programs and funding. We believe that hepatitis advocacy should be consumer driven and reflect the diversity of the patient community, not controlled by the pharmaceutical industry and politically powerful and entrenched special interests.

If you would like to know more about MaHepPEP,  feel free to contact me using the Contact Us form.

Thanks!

Peter Fisher, BS Public Health
Founder and Editor in Chief

Updated Thu, Jun 17, 2010 11:52 AM