Local
CDC urged to expand meningitis vaccine recommendations
D.C. activist John Becker launched petition with transgender Minnesota man who nearly died from infection
John Becker (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)
John Becker, who is the managing editor of the Bilerico Project, on Oct. 9 launched the petition on Change.org with Julian Siwek, a transgender Minnesota man who lost all of his fingers and most of his feet when he contracted bacterial meningitis as a child. The petition had 14,682 signatories as of deadline.
“I don’t want any other children to have to experience something similar,” Siwek said on Change.org.
Becker told the Blade on Tuesday he decided to launch the petition, in part, because LGBT people – and those with HIV/AIDS who have compromised immune systems in particular – remain vulnerable to bacterial meningitis.
Headaches, fever and a stiff neck are the most common symptoms associated with meningitis. It is spread through respiratory droplets or oral secretions, and the incubation period is typically between three and seven days.
The New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene earlier this year recommended men who have sex with men who live in the five boroughs or visited them to receive a meningitis vaccine after officials reported seven people had died from bacterial meningitis since 2010. The New York State Department of Health in March expanded this list to include MSM and people with HIV/AIDS who have had “intimate contact” with other men since Sept. 1, 2012.
A West Hollywood, Calif., lawyer in April died from bacterial meningitis.
Even though D.C. health officials stressed they had not seen an increase in bacterial meningitis cases in the nation’s capital, Whitman-Walker Health in April recommended gay and bisexual men receive the vaccine.
“Our community has heightened vulnerability as it is, plus the vulnerability that kids under a year old have,” Becker told the Blade, noting there are 115,000 same-sex couples in the U.S. who are raising children. “To me that really magnifies the importance within our own community.”
The CDC recommends adolescents and teenagers between 11-18 should receive two doses of the meningitis vaccine. It also says children who are between 9 and 23-months-old and those with specific medical conditions should receive two doses of the vaccine for “adequate protection.”
The CDC Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices on Wednesday considered lowering the age threshold for the vaccine.
“I know they’re getting the messages and e-mails that are generated by this position,” Becker said. “Julian and I wanted to demonstrate grassroots support in the LGBT community. It’s clearly resonated so that’s encouraging.”
CDC spokesperson Benjamin Haynes told the Blade the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices “carefully reviews evidence and considers public perspectives as part of its public deliberation of immunization policy.”
“CDC and the committee appreciate the concerns raised in both petitions and public testimony at today’s meeting,” he said.
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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