Local
Questions surface over resignation of AIDS director
Catania calls loss of Hader ‘catastrophic’
The announcement Tuesday that Dr. Shannon Hader, director of the city’s HIV/AIDS administration, had resigned after serving three years at an agency she is credited with greatly improving drew expressions of puzzlement and concern among LGBT and AIDS activists.
Speculation that the resignation could be linked to disagreements between her and the director of the Department of Health, Dr. Pierre Vigilance, under whom she served, surfaced when the department omitted any mention of Hader in a statement announcing her interim replacement.
“I share the concern of the community about the abrupt departure of Dr. Hader,” said Peter Rosenstein, a local gay activist. “We have to make sure we don’t fall back into the hole again on AIDS,” he said, referring to the AIDS administration’s reputation for being trouble-plagued prior to Hader’s tenure there.
Mayor Adrian Fenty formally announced Hader’s resignation at an impromptu news conference Tuesday afternoon, when he introduced Dr. Nnemdi Kamanu Elias, the AIDS administration’s chief medical director, as Hader’s temporary replacement.
“Our city has made considerable strides in the fight against communicable diseases like HIV/AIDS, increasing the number of HIV testing programs and investing in HIV/AIDS awareness and research,” Fenty said. “I am confident that Dr. Kamanu Elias and the District will continue to ensure that city residents are armed with the necessary tools to protect and improve their health.”
The mayor’s office said a nationwide search would be conducted to find a permanent replacement.
Fenty told the Blade on Thursday that Hader, whom he described as having done “a fantastic job” at the city’s HIV/AIDS administration, felt it was time to “move on” in her career.
“Just like everything else in life, there’s a time when you move on and do something bigger, better and/or different,” he said. “And I think it was that time for her.”
Fenty said he had no comment on speculation of friction between Hader and Vigilance.
Hader will leave her current post July 15 and will begin a new job sometime this summer as vice president of the D.C.-based Future’s Group, an international consulting firm that works on public health issues.
Hader told the Blade in an e-mail that she would leave it to the mayor’s office to comment on details surrounding her resignation rather than discuss the matter herself.
“I will continue to be involved in the fight against HIV/AIDS, just changing hats from time to time,” she said. “I look forward to putting on the new hat of ‘expert & engaged community member’ with regards to the fight against HIV/AIDS in D.C. I am a resident, I am a constituent, I am passionate about our community and feel privileged to be (and continue to be) a part of it!” she said in her e-mail.
Gay D.C. Council members David Catania (I-At Large) and Jim Graham (D-Ward 1), who have been outspoken advocates for city programs on behalf of people with HIV/AIDS, could not be immediately reached for comment.
The Washington Post, which contacted Catania, reported he declined to comment on speculation that he was deeply troubled that Fenty and Vigilance did not take adequate steps to keep Hader in her post as D.C.’s AIDS administration head.
“Her loss is catastrophic,” the Post quoted Catania as saying.
Catania told the Blade in an interview last week, before news of Hader’s resignation surfaced, that she played an instrumental role in improving the city’s AIDS programs, helping to transform the AIDS administration from what he called an agency in “total chaos.”
Although few people use its full name, the administration was merged two years ago with other health department agencies and renamed the HIV/AIDS, Hepatitis, Tuberculosis & Sexually Transmitted Disease Administration.
As chair of the Council’s Committee on Health, Catania is also credited with focusing attention on the problems at the AIDS administration through numerous committee oversight hearings.
Before becoming head of the city’s AIDS administration, Hader had served as an epidemiologist for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Global AIDS Program in Zimbabwe.
Kamanu Elias became chief medical officer for the D.C. AIDS administration in February 2009. The statement from the mayor’s office says her duties included ensuring “the technical and programmatic quality of HIV/AIDS and related programs throughout the DOH.”
Before joining the D.C. government, she worked as senior manager at the European and Developing Countries Clinical Trials Partnership in the Netherlands. The organization is an arm of the European Commission and was created to support the development of “clinical interventions for HIV and other diseases in Africa and to build the capacity of developing country scientists,” the statement from the mayor’s office says.
District of Columbia
Mayor Bowser signs bill requiring insurers to cover PrEP
‘This is a win in the fight against HIV/AIDS’
D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser on March 20 signed a bill approved by the D.C. Council that requires health insurance companies to cover the costs of HIV prevention or PrEP drugs for D.C. residents at risk for HIV infection.
Like all legislation approved by the Council and signed by the mayor, the bill, called the PrEP D.C. Amendment Act, was sent to Capitol Hill for a required 30-day congressional review period before it takes effect as D.C. law.
Gay D.C. Council member Zachary Parker (D-Ward 5) last year introduced the bill.
Insurance coverage for PrEP drugs has been provided through coverage standards included in the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare. But AIDS advocacy organizations have called on states and D.C. to pass their own legislation requiring insurance coverage of PrEP as a safeguard in case federal policies are weakened or removed by the Trump administration, which has already reduced federal funding for HIV/AIDS-related programs.
Like legislation passed by other states, the PrEP D.C. Amendment Act requires insurers to cover all PrEP drugs approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
Studies have shown that PrEP drugs, which can be taken as pills or by injection just twice a year, are highly effective in preventing HIV infection.
“I think this is a win for our community,” Parker said after the D.C. Council voted unanimously to approve the bill on its first vote on the measure in February. “And this is a win in the fight against HIV/AIDS.”
District of Columbia
Blade editor to be inducted into D.C. Society of Professional Journalists Hall of Fame
Kevin Naff marks 24 years with publication this year
Longtime Washington Blade Editor Kevin Naff will be inducted into D.C.’s Society of Professional Journalists Hall of Fame in June, the group announced this week.
Hall of Fame honorees are chosen by the Society of Professional Journalists’ Washington, D.C., Pro Chapter. Naff and two other inductees — Seth Borenstein, a Washington-based national science writer for the AP and Cheryl W. Thompson, an award-winning correspondent for National Public Radio — will be celebrated at the chapter’s Dateline Awards dinner on Tuesday, June 9, at the National Press Club. The dinner’s emcee will be Kojo Nnamdi, host of WAMU radio’s weekly “Politics Hour.”
“I am tremendously honored by this recognition,” Naff said. “I have spent a lifetime in the D.C. area learning from so many talented journalists and am humbled to be considered in their company. Thank you to SPJ and to all the LGBTQ pioneers who came before me who made this possible.”
Naff joined the Blade in 2002 after years in print and digital journalism. He worked as a financial reporter for Reuters in New York before moving to Baltimore in 1996 to launch the Baltimore Sun’s website. He spent four years at the Sun before leaving for an internet startup and later joining the mobile data group at Verizon Wireless working on the first generation of mobile apps.
He then moved to the Blade and has served as the publication’s longest-tenured editor. In 2023, Naff published his first book, “How We Won the War for LGBTQ Equality — And How Our Enemies Could Take It All Away.”
Previous Hall of Fame inductees include luminaries in journalism like Wolf Blitzer, Benjamin Bradlee, Bob Woodward, Andrea Mitchell, and Edgar Allen Poe. The Blade’s senior news reporter Lou Chibbaro Jr. was inducted in 2015.
Maryland
Supreme Court ruling against conversion therapy bans could affect Md. law
Then-Gov. Larry Hogan signed statute in 2018
By PAMELA WOOD, JOHN-JOHN WILLIAMS IV, and MADELEINE O’NEILL | The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled against a law banning “conversion therapy” for LGBTQ kids in Colorado, a ruling that also could apply to Maryland’s ban on the discredited practice.
An 8-1 high court majority sided with a Christian counselor who argues the law banning talk therapy violates the First Amendment. The justices agreed that the law raises free speech concerns and sent it back to a lower court to decide whether it meets a legal standard that few laws pass.
Justice Neil Gorsuch, writing for the court’s majority, said the law “censors speech based on viewpoint.” The First Amendment, he wrote, “stands as a shield against any effort to enforce orthodoxy in thought or speech in this country.”
The rest of this article can be read on the Baltimore Banner’s website.
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