A Denver District judge is allowing a whistleblower lawsuit against the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment to move forward in a ruling that cast doubt on testimony from the agency’s leader. In a ruling last week, Judge Shelley Gilman denied the state’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit brought by a former high-level employee, […]
AIDS
Posted inHealth, News, Politics and Government
As HIV infection rates rise in Colorado, pharmacies can now prescribe preventative pills
Colorado this month became one of the first states in the nation to let pharmacists prescribe HIV prevention drugs, part of a public health effort to curb rising infection rates nearly a decade after breakthroughs in medicine that can stop HIV’s spread. Starting this week, pharmacies can begin offering the daily preventative pill or an […]
Posted inOpinion, Write On, Colorado
Luck and privilege let me dodge HIV in Denver. But viruses don’t care who you are.
Back then, I lived adjacent to the HIV pandemic, as cells share membrane walls. In 1984, when I was 18 and flirting with a cocaine addiction, I had a lover with saucer pupils and long white fingers who tripped on acid through Thanksgiving dinner at my sister’s house, staring at brown gravy as it dripped […]
Posted inHealth, News
Colorado wants to let pharmacists write prescriptions for HIV prevention drugs
First it was birth-control pills, then smoking-cessation medications. Now, Colorado is on its way to becoming one of the first states in the country to allow people to skip the doctor’s office and get prescriptions for drugs that prevent HIV infection at the pharmacy. The move comes as more than 400 Coloradans are diagnosed with […]
Posted inHealth, News, Politics and Government
HIV-prevention funding is being slashed in Colorado, even as a growing number of people are diagnosed
An alert went out to health agencies in late summer: the number of Coloradans diagnosed with HIV was on the rise, especially women. The state health department is now predicting 455 people will receive HIV diagnoses by the end of 2019, up from 409 last year. And this comes after more than a decade of […]