Safespace director Kara Denards and I.‘-'4rogram

    

Coordinator Hannah Hauser with their award certificate.

State Council

MONTPELIER — October was
Domestic Violence Awareness
Month, and few organizations
have worked harder than
SafeSpace to spread that aware-
ness. Toward the end of the .
month, their efforts — not just in
October, but throughout the
year -— were recognized by the
state’s Domestic Violence '
Council with a “Community
Leadership Awar ” at a gather-
ing in Montpelier.

SafeSpace was one of three
honorees. The weekly newspa-
per Seven Days and the coun— I
cil’s former co-chair Judge
Barbara Zander also received
recognition in the form of
framed certificates.

The three honorees were
chosen from among five nomi-
nations for the recognition.

According to Council
Director Robyn Maguire,
Council member Kim Anderson
said, in presenting the certifi-
cate, that Safe Space’s presence
is'crucial to making the
Council and other service
providers “aware of how to
deal with cultural literacy”
involving the lgbt community.

“When the rubber meets the
road», there is notenough recog-
nitidh of the occurrence of vio-
lence in same-sex couples. It’s
not an easy job.” Maguire said
in an interview.

Despite the involvement of
“lesbians who have started and

Awards Safespace

done this work,” in what are
now mainstream domestic vio-
lence resource, prevention, and
service agencies, Maguire con-
tinued, “same-sex domestic vio-
lence doesn’t fit the paradigm
' of many service providers.”

‘ She credited SafeSpace with
“looking at the hard questions
and holding up a mirror” to the
community and to other domes-
tic violence agencies.

A “It is necessary for
SafeSpace to exist. If the queer
community doesn’t do the work
for themselves, nobody else
will do it,” Maguire said.
“Without SafeSpace, how
would the [domestic violence]
service organizations receive
the education they need?
SafeSpace has really been a
driving force.”

The Vermont Council on . _
Domestic Violence, which pre-
sented the awards, is distinct»
from the Vermont Network
Against Domestic and Sexual
Violence. “The Network is a
coalition of the 16 direct-service
programs throughout the state,”
according to Bethany Pombar,

the Network’s outreach manag-
_ er. The Network is a member of
the Council. The Council is the
I umbrella organization for coun-
ty domestic and sexual violence
task forces. which bring together
representatives of various serv-
ice agencies, including police,
hospitals, and the like. V,

Flanagan Hurt in Crash

RICHMOND — State Sen. Ed
Flanagan remained hospitalized
as .0ITM went to press, follow— I
ing a one-car accident in the
early hours of Friday, November
18. There was no official news
regarding his condition, as his
. family instructed Fletcher Allen
Health Care not to release infor-
mation on his injuries. However
one news source reported that he
was likely dealing with head
injuries and hypothermia.
According to news reports,

9 the 54-year-old Flanagan was

traveling north on Interstate 89

when his car left the road, and
traveled 275 feet down an
embankment, striking a culvert
and rolling onto its hood.
Flanagan was still in the car 12
hours later when 'a hunter slowed
for the Richmond exit and his
19-year-old son spotted the car.
In news reports, the young

man’s father was quoted as saying
that the bottom of the car was diffi-
cult to see because it was covered
in mud and grass. The young man
scrambled down the embankment,
saw movement inside the vehicle,
and climbed back up to call for ~

help. Flanagan was admitted to
Fletcher Allen by 3 pm. Friday.
Ed Flanagan was elected as
state auditor in 1992, came out in
1996, and was re-elected as an
openly gay man. He was then the
first openly gay statewide elected
official in the country. He made
history again in 2000 as the first
openly gay candidate nominated by
a major party for a U.S. Senate
seat. He was elected to the Ver-
mont Senate in 2004 from Chitten-
den County. '
His 55th birthday is

December 18.V

CARES Launches

BURLINGTON — As of December
5, anyone seeking an HIV test at

- Vermont CARES will have the ‘ '

option of getting their results
back in 20 minutes. The old
state-provided test requires sam-
ples to make a round-trip to the
Department of Health with a
two—week turnaround time for
results to get to the consumer.

“This is huge!” declared
CARES Executive Director
Peter J acobsen. “This will elimi-
nate people’s anxiety over the
two-week wait. Many, many
more people will get tested.”

_ ’ Jacobsen estimated that in the
2006 calendar year, the agency’s
testing sites would administer
1200 tests, compared to 800 for
2005, ,

_Jacobsen’s assertion of a
major increase was based on a
pilot project conducted at Maple
Leaf Farm in Jericho, a sub-
stance abuse treatment center. In
a normal session, six people ask
for an HIV test, Jacobsen said.
During the pilot project _for
OraQuick,. three times that many
asked to be tested.

About a third of people tested
with the long-wait process never
return for their results, according
to national figures from the
CDC. In Vermont, the
Department of Health pays test-
ing agencies for administering
the tests only when its lab
results are actually delivered, so
absentee consumers put sexual
partners at risk for infection and
cost agencies money.

The DoH has refused to use

Quick HIV Test

the new OraQuick test, contend-
ing that it will result in a high rate
of false positives. The oral rapid
test has been approved by the fed-
eral Food and Drug Administra-
tion since March of 2004.

According to J acobsen, the
results from the OraQuick test
show only one in 1,000 come
back as a false positive. “We
always tell people that this is a
preliminary test. But in the
meantime, 999 people are get-
ting correct results in 20 min-
utes.” Anyone who tests positive
is encouraged to get retested
using the lab-based process.

“We started a year ago having
a dialogue with the Department
of Health,” J acobsen said,,“and
then we realized we had to go
on our own, we had to find pri-
vate funding.”

The private funding is part of
the agency’s regular fundraising.
No HIV-testing sugar daddy or
mama has materialized to under-
write the program. Thus, anyone
wanting the OraQuick results-in-
20—minutes test will be asked to
make a donation of around $40.
The exceptions include prisoners
and substance abuse treatment
clients, whose tests are funded
by a specific grant.

“Because the rapid test is pri-
vately funded, we don’t have to
share the intrusive [client] data
required by the CDC,” Jacobsen
pointed out, although the agency
will share basic data on numbers
of tests and results.

J acobsen expressed gratitude
to Fletcher Allen Health Care in

Burlington for a preliminary
grant that helped to fund training,
planning, and the pilot project.
“This is crucial for the people
we serve who are high risk and
the most rural population, where
getting back to get results can be
nearly impossible,” Jacobsen
said. “Inmates can be trans-
ferred, substance abuse treat-

ment patients rarely come back

for results on the long test.
Overall, the return rates for our
Burlington site are 96 percent.
The corrections and substance
abuse treatment return rate is 40
to 60 percent, depending on the
center or the facility.”

The test involves a swab of
the upper and lower outer gums
for “oral mucosal transudate”
(loosely speaking, saliva). And
at this point, said J acobsen, “we
always have to remind everyone
that HIV cannot ‘be transmitted
through saliva.” The ‘results indi-
cate whether antibodies to the
virus are _present. The test can
also read a drop of blood from a
finger stick, according to infor-
mation provided by OraSure

Technologies, Inc., the maker of

the OraQuick test.

“This is such crucial technol-
ogy,” Jacobsen said excitedly,
“and it’s already being used
almost everywhere else‘ in the
country.” »

CARES is the first agency in
Vermont to use the OraQuick —
test, with the exception of a
rapid-result blood test used at
Fletcher Allen for occupational
exposures. V

 

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