25 Years / 25 Stories

17: Minnesota's Leadership

Amy Brugh, public policy director at the Minnesota AIDS Project, speaks regularly to state legislators. She visits the capitol, helps create new laws and is generally on the frontline of setting the public policy agenda on HIV–related issues.

She represents how far the organization's focus on public policy has evolved over the last 25 years.

"Public policy on HIV started out with a small number of grassroots activists who were primarily gay men, often sitting around kitchen tables figuring out what to do," she said. "That has morphed dramatically over the years. Now we have a full–time staff and a much broader range of people, including a much broader group of legislators, who care passionately about this issue."

The road of activists from the kitchen tables to the capitol building has been a long one.

In 1993, thanks to the help of the legislative action team, the organization successfully lobbied to halt of the criminalization of HIV in Minnesota.

In the 1980s, she said, the organization was largely relegated to a reactionary response to the issues surrounding HIV, too often finding itself challenging laws or defending rights only after the laws had already passed or the rights already been violated. So, in 1990, Lorraine Teel, current executive director, formed the Minnesota AIDS Project–Legislative Action Team (MAP–LAT), a group of Minnesota lobbyists sympathetic to the organization's cause. These lobbyists stayed in contact whenever HIV related issues were discussed at the state capitol. If the discussion was negative, the organization could intervene.

The efforts paid off. In 1993, thanks to the help of the legislative action team, the organization successfully lobbied to halt of the criminalization of HIV in Minnesota.

The next year, the organization took things a step further, hiring Bob Tracy as the first staff member devoted solely to public policy.

"We began to think boldly," Teel said. "We began to think, what if we can change laws or create new ones?"

That is exactly what they did. From 1995 to 1997, the public policy department, among other things, helped stop the Minnesota legislature from placing restrictions on HIV education in schools, pushed for the regulation of viatical companies which often exploited dying individuals by paying them for their life insurance policies, and changed a state statute on the sale of syringes to allow pharmacists to dispense needles without a prescription. The HIV Awareness and Prevention Act, securing an increase of $1 million in HIV prevention funds from the state legislature, was also passed in 1997.

In 2007, public policy worked with legislators to appropriate funds designated for HIV prevention programs in immigrant communities.

Between 2000 and 2007, a few of the Minnesota AIDS Project's public policy accomplishments included fending off numerous attempts to cut HIV–related funding, helping enact legislation allowing parents to designate guardians for their children in the event of the parent's incapacity or death and aiding in the defeat of a proposal to remove sexual orientation as a protected class in Minnesota's Human Rights Act. In 2007, public policy worked with legislators to appropriate funds designated for HIV prevention programs in immigrant communities.

The public policy team's efforts have continued to this day, with a current focus on creating a law to provide a comprehensive sex education standard for schools across the state. Though the idea has been introduced in bills many times over the years, it has yet to pass. This year the legislation made it through both the House and Senate but was removed from an education package before being sent to the governor's office.

Brugh said despite her department's many successes, such setbacks aren't uncommon in the struggle to inform the public about HIV.

"Elected officials are really just normal people with the same misconceptions as anyone else," she said. "We're constantly struggling to figure out how to fight complacency."

They're doing so today with a much greater range of resources and support than their early counterparts. Still, the mission remains the same today as it was around those kitchen tables 25 years ago.

"We continue to this day to come up with proactive actions to help those living with HIV," Teel said.

25 Years / 25 Stories

17: Minnesota's Leadership

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