Mayor Willie Brown's new AIDS advisor

We know that it isn't enough for Mayor Willie Brown that he has more than 150 employees at the DPH's AIDS Office, more than thirty people on the Ryan White CARE Act Council, more than forty people on the HIV Prevention Planning Council, a director of DPH who used to head the AIDS Office, more than 200 researchers and employees at assorted UCSF AIDS programs, maybe another sixty or so AIDS specialists at SF General Hospital and none of these people are enough for the Mayor.

He has had a special assistant advising him on HIV and AIDS issues since 1998. So far, there have been three local AIDS czars; Dick Pabich, Bill Barnes and the current one, Mike Shriver, and all of them have had their own assistants to help them with their duties.

I saw a message on the Gay Men's Health Summit group on Yahoo, groups.yahoo.com/group/Ga...sage/1451, that was signed by a man named Luke Adams (see excerpt below). I wondered if the Mayor had fired Shriver and replaced him with Adams, or if Mayor Brown has hired a second full time HIV advisor, one who reports to Shriver. Adams signs his emails as an analyst, not secretarial assistant, which to me says either we have co-czar structure in the SF AIDS Czar's office, or there's a new czar. In any event, it might behoove a reporter or two to investigate what is going on with the Mayor AIDS Czar's office.

Please also note that on the AIDS Czar's web site, http://www.ci.sf.ca.us/hivaids/, this office claims the following.

"Quarterly, beginning Spring 2002, the Mayor’s Office on AIDS & HIV Policy will publish a report on legislative, budget, programmatic and policy activities which are germane to HIV prevention, care, treatment, research, housing and other ancillary services in San Francisco. These reports will be available on this site."

Well, guess what? They're not available. Yep, the spring and summer quarterly report from the Mayor's AIDS Czar office are missing from the site, despite written promises to the contrary.

The site also states this claim. "The original Final Report from the Summit as well as 'Promises Kept' and all subsequent published updates and evaluations of progress from the Summit will be published on this web page."

Partially true. The final report from the summit is indeed available on the web, but at the DPH web site. Of more concern to me is the lack of a report regarding any promises kept and all updates since the time of the Mayor's original AIDS summit, which was held in January 1998. Are there any bits of evidence showing what promises the Mayor kept to AIDS patients since 1998? Not on the AIDS Czar's site. I just don't understand why the czar would mention quarterly reports and a promises kept report on his site, then not make such documents available for the public via the web.

Finally, the AIDS czar's site alleges that the Mayor also has an HIV Scientific Advisory Committee. However, no information is provided about who chairs this body, who sits on it, when it meets, what's been on the committee's agenda, and of course, no minutes from this committee are on the web. If the committee exists, I wonder what it does that is so different from the work of the other bodies in this town set up to deal with HIV and all of its manifestations.

Maybe Luke Adams will be able to tell us exactly how many AIDS advisors the Mayor needs to make his decisions.

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Luke Adams
AIDS & HIV Policy Analyst
c/o Mayor's Office of AIDS & HIV Policy
1 Dr. Carlton B. Goodlett Place
City Hall, Room 475
San Francisco, CA 94102
415/554-5967 (direct)
luke.adams@s...