Body Positive chair Ashley Barratt A sharper focus on advocacy and the needs of its members, and a geographical broadening beyond Auckland and Wellington, are amongst aims agreed to by the country's biggest HIV-positive people's support and advocacy organisation. Body Positive primarily deals with the needs of HIV-infected gay and bi men, by far the largest population group with HIV in the country. It's moving towards the internationally accepted GIPA - Greater Involvement of People living with HIV/AIDS - Principle, a move which is likely to see it involved less in work such as HIV testing and more on the needs of men who have already been identified was having HIV. "For Body Positive as an agency there is very limited funding available," says board chair Ashley Barratt," and the opportunities to provide services to HIV-positive people are significant so we will be concentrating more on that." Barratt says the organisation will be increasingly more open to "taking direction from, and including, our HIV-positive members in the work we do." BP will also be instituting a leadership development programme, drawing on similar initiatives in Canada and Australia. Body Positive has been too quiet regarding open public debate with the changing nature of the epidemic and its effects on men who have sex with men, Barratt says. "For instance, the science of HIV is changing and this is particularly evident in the area of Treatment as Prevention," he notes "There is more information becoming available and it needs to be better understood." Barratt says four new members have been voted onto the twelve-person BP board, "bringing in a large amount of new talent and energy."
Credit: GayNZ.com Daily News staff
First published: Friday, 24th April 2015 - 11:50am