BIOGRAPHY - ANNE-CHRISTINE D'ADESKY
AIDS Advocate, Author, Journalist, Documentary Filmmaker, Public Intellectual
Named one of top 35 "Ones To Watch" leaders in global AIDS - POZ magazine, Dec. 06.
"One of the world's leading public intellectuals."
- Dr. Paul Farmer, Partners In Health.
"D'Adesky brings her rich history of thoughtful journalism and fierce activism to bear on one of the most urgent questions of our age: how to give people in poor countries the same chance to live as people in rich ones."
--Mark Schoofs, Pulitzer prize-winning journalist for his Village Voice series on AIDS in Africa.
"The main shift in the arena of global AIDS is our collective expectation of what is possible." - Anne-christine d'Adesky
TRANSFORM HOW YOU THINK ABOUT AIDS
and other global problems....
Biography: Award-winning international journalist, author, documentary filmmaker and social change activist, Anne-christine d'Adesky is on a mission to inspire and mobilize bold global responses to solve the HIV/AIDS pandemic - and share innovative solutions that can help transform other global problems.
From Kigali to Port au Prince, d'Adesky has traveled the world investigating the high-stakes struggle to provide treatment for the millions living with HIV and AIDS in resource-poor countries. No effort in the fight to end the AIDS epidemic escapes her rigorous gaze: whether it be grassroots victories, practical solutions or tragic setbacks. With urgency, clarity and vision d'Adesky shows us all how we can collectively respond to one of the most critical issues of our time - and how AIDS is critically linked to the underlying socioeconomic issues of poverty and social injustice.
Global Journalism: D'Adesky's pioneering AIDS reporting began in Haiti in the 1980's. She then turned her focus on the mounting global epidemic, writing for the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, The Nation, Village Voice, and OUT, among others. She served as Senior Editor for health and science at OUT magazine, where she also launched the national HIV magazine, HIV Plus. She has written for medical journals such as JAMA and journals of the World Health Organization and United Nations; and niche HIV magazines like POZ, a national monthly. She works as a consultant to public health organizations, including the World Health Organization.
"Moving Mountains:" After crossing from the globe from Russia, to India, to South Africa examining the challenges of delivering treatment to people in resource-poor settings, d'Adesky published her acclaimed book, "Moving Mountains: The Race to Treat Global AIDS (Verso, 2006)," a groundbreaking book that analyses global progress and medical challenges in delivering universal treatment to people in resource-poor settings. Today, she remains a frequent guest on radio and television programs about AIDS, and continues to publish op-eds and commentary in major media such as the San Francisco Chronicle.
D'adesky is also author of 'Under the Bone,' a novel set in post-Duvalier Haiti (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1994) that grew out of her international human rights reporting there in the '80s.
In other media, she is co- Producer and co-Director of the documentary film 'Pills, Profits, Protest: Chronicle of the Global AIDS Movement.' (www.outcast-films.com),
broadcast exclusively on Showtime cable in the U.S in 2005.
She also worked as a radio producer for the public radio station WBAI in New York in the late '90s, co-producing and hosting "Undercurrents," a daily, global affairs program aired on Pacifica stations.
Partnering with African Women to Deliver HIV Treatment - WE-ACTx: Driven to do something more than journalism, d'Adesky partnered with two pioneering US women HIV's expert physicians in late 2003 to found WE-ACTx - the Women's Equity in Access to Care and Treatment initiative. WE-ACTx is a global partnership effort to help deliver more rapid access to HIV treatment and services to affected women and girls in resource-poor countries. WE-ACTx began working in Rwanda in mid-2004 in partnership with the Rwanda government and local NGOs serving survivors of genocide and rape. Some 250,000 Rwandan women were raped in the 1994 genocide and contracted HIV as a result. Only a handful accessed HIV treatment in 2004 when WE-ACTx began its work.
Today, WE-ACTx has 24 NGO partners, and their affiliate program in Rwanda is now an independent NGO called WE-ACTx for Hope, with an all-Rwandan staff. The program operates three clinics and a mobile unit in greater Kigali. Their program provides free, comprehensive medical care and supportive services to over 6,000 clients- the majority rape survivors and their families. A year after launching a mobile, voluntary, family-based HIV testing program, WE-ACTx had provided HIV testing to 27,000 people (as of September 2005). That number has greatly increased today.
Holistic focus & supportive services: WE-ACTx's holistic approach to HIV service delivery includes offering food, education, legal advocacy, and a long-term goal of sustainability and self-empowerment for their clients. WE-ACTx set up a small income-generation cooperative for clients. Today, the INEZA cooperative produces bags, clothes and other products sold locally and on the international market, via our partner, Manos de Madres (www.manosdemadres.org), based in the United States.
Focusing on Conflict Zones: Ms. d'Adesky has also worked as a community educator on HIV and health issues. She has developed peer educational and training materials in different languages for grassroots groups in Rwanda and elsewhere. She currently collaborates with survivors and HIV groups in other conflict zones in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya, Zimbabwe Sudan, and Uganda, particularly in areas where mass rape is a tool of war that is fueling a rising HIV epidemic in women and children. Through this work, she hopes to share the message of hope, survival and leadership that she has encountered in Rwanda and from African women and girls, and their families, living with and affected by HIV and sexual violence. She is also reaching out to men leaders and advocates to become active partners and work in alliance with women's groups in the global fight to empower women and combat sexual violence.
Moving Online: In 2007, Ms. d'Adesky teamed up with a Portland-based group, World Pulse Media, to create and launch (in early 2008) PulseWire, a new Internet web 2.0 tool for socially networking women and groups working to empower women and create social change. PulseWire is launching with a special focus on HIV/AIDS, human trafficking and access to water/sustainability as three pressing global problems that face women, and where women offer innovative solutions.
Personal Life: Ms. d'Adesky lives in California and divides her travel time between New York City, a longtime home, and east Africa. She lives in San Francisco with her 9- year old daughter, Lucy Blue.
