RESULTS Austin 2016 Newsletter

RESULTS celebrates Global Fund

“We’re not just committed to fighting these epidemics, we’re committed to end them.” - U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Heather Higginbottom, Sept.16^th.

On September 16, 2016 in Montreal, Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau hosted a successful pledging conference for the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. Pledges from the private sector and governments worldwide totaled $13 billion. These funds will enable the Global Fund to save 8 million lives and prevent 300 million new infections in the next 3 years alone. Leading the way, the U.S. promised to match $1 for every $2 contributed by other donors up to a maximum of $4.3 billion. Two African countries pledged for the first time, while other countries increased their contributions, one by 45%.

In June, U.S. RESULTS advocates visited Washington DC and urged the administration to make exactly this pledge. Our RESULTS staff supported this advocacy keeping us informed and engaged. 

Thanks to your support, RESULTS is expanding around the world, helping citizens in other countries become effective in guiding decisions of their own governments.  Indeed RESULTS organizations in Australia, Canada, the UK, France, Japan, Kenya, Korea, Zambia and South Africa successfully urged their governments and the European Commission to make bold pledges to the Global Fund.

Fighting hard for maternal & child survival

 

RESULTS continues to push for passage of the Reach Every Mother and Child Act. The bill proposes reforms with the bold goal of saving the lives of 15 million children and of 600,000 mothers by 2020.  To achieve the goal the reforms call for U.S. assistance to focus on the poorest communities, scale up the most effective interventions, improve accountability, and coordinate programs across various U.S. agencies.   

RESULTS advocates generated media supporting the Reach Act in all fifty states, a first for the national organization. As we compose this newsletter there are 201 cosponsors in the House and 26 in the Senate.  RESULTS Austin secured 5 of the 12 Texas cosponsors and now we are intensifying our efforts by urging the cosponsors to encourage the chairman of that committee to move the bill forward.

Your support throughout this campaign has enabled us to keep pushing.  We hope to get this bill passed before the end of the year, a rare accomplishment for a bill the first session it is introduced.  

                            RESULTS Austin activities in 2016

RESULTS Austin is excited that Dr. Sheeba Kunnel, a pediatrician here in Austin, joined as a strong member of our group.  With her energy renewing our enthusiasm, we accomplished:

•  Six published letters to the editor on global health.
• Face to face meetings with Representatives Gene Green, Bill Flores, Roger Williams, Michael McCaul, John Carter & Lamar Smith.
• Fourteen meetings with congressional staff.
• Rep. McCaul cosponsored the Education for All Act,  which passed unanimously in the House.
• Three of our representatives signed letters supporting appropriations requests. 
• Four of us attended the International Conference in DC.

Thanks to your generous support, RESULTS expansion staff has added two new groups to our region this year in Louisiana and Oklahoma.  You are empowering RESULTS outreach in all 50 states reaching more members of Congress and producing more media for greater impact.

We are also pursuing a group start in San Antonio.  Please let us know if you know folks there who might be interested in helping with that effort.

2016 fundraising

RESULTS Austin will not be having a benefit event this year.  Instead we share our progress and ask for your renewed support.  Dollars invested in RESULTS get perhaps the “biggest bang for the buck” of any organization.  They pay for staff, who support and empower us, the volunteers.  Together we all create change.

We ask for your continued support for RESULTS.  We hope you share our vision of a world where children can grow up healthy and mothers don't die while pregnant or giving birth.  We see a world where parents are surviving AIDS and tuberculosis in order to work and care for their families. We want a world where everyone has access to education and economic opportunity.  With your help we can achieve this vision.  Thank you for being our partner!

If you wish to donate, please contribute online at www.tinyurl.com/RESULTSAustin2016.

RESULTS / RESULTS Educational Fund

1101 15^th St. NW, Suite 1200 - Washington, DC 20005

www.RESULTS.org

2016 RESULTS International Conference and Lobbying

Wow!  What an incredible RESULTS conference this year.   The conference was three days packed with speakers, workshops, and fellowship.  Paul Farmer, founder of Partners in Health shared about his cutting edge work, pioneering AIDS treatment for the poorest people in world. I learned new stories and skills.  I heard of the shift in health focus to the ultra-poor and the emphasis on equity, not simply equality.  

The conference was especially meaningful because of Loyce Maturu from Zimbabwe.  I got to meet Loyce and learn her story.  In 2002 at the age of ten her mother and brother died the same week, both sick with AIDS & TB.  Loyce went to live with her aunt.  Two years later she became sick and was diagnosed with AIDS & TB herself.

Fortunately, Loyce was able to begin treatment because by this time anti-retroviral and TB drugs were available due to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria.

However the stigma of AIDS is very powerful and Loyce's aunt threw her out.  She went to live with her uncle, but he was abusive, both physically and emotionally.  In desperation Loyce took all of her meds in one day, trying to escape the pain.  After two nights in the hospital, without any visits from friends or family, Loyce began a long road back with the support of adolescent AIDS peer counselors. 

Today Loyce is sparkling and accomplished 24 year old, an AIDS counselor herself and now an advocate and spokesperson for people with AID and TB.

It gave me chills to think that back when she fell sick with AIDS I was in Washington DC advocating for funding to launch the Global Fund.  That enabled her to get the treatment and counseling she needed to survive.  She would not be alive today without the collective efforts of supporters of the Global Fund.

I ended up going to ten different congressional offices to advocate on our issues.  We focused on the Reach Every Mother and Child Act and on building more support for the Global Fund.  Although we won’t know until later how successful we will be, we’re patient and we won’t quit.

The director of the Global Fund, Mark Dybul, spoke to us by video from Italy.  He announced the wonderful news that Italy had just promised to increase its commitment to the Global Fund by 30 percent!  And this is in spite of Italy’s own budget challenges.

                                                     

Donor countries will convene in Montreal in early September to pledge their commitments to the Global Fund for the next three years, 2017-2019.  The Fund seeks $13 billion to continue their work.   We hope President Obama will continue US leadership with a pledge for 1/3 of the $13 billion.  We scurried around Capitol Hill on Tuesday and Wednesday, asking members of congress to support this level, maintaining what we've done the last three years.  The Fund has saved seventeen million lives since 2002 and is on track to save 22 million all together by the end of 2016.

Do these big numbers just make your eyes glaze over?  Me too!  But visualize this:  22 million people would fill the Darrell K. Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium 200 times over.   Or imagine roughly 3 out of every 4 Texans dying! Meeting Loyce Maturu, a survivor, helps make it real to me.

You may be glad to hear that the Reach Every Mother and Child Act has garnered 158 co-sponsors, including 56 Republicans.  This puts it in the top one percent of bills right now.  When the House reconvenes after July 4^th, I think there will be another dozen or two on the bill.

In two decades of lobbying on hunger, no one in Texas RESULTS has ever had a real meeting with any US Senator from Texas.  We meet with staff, but a chance encounter has been our only opportunity to touch a senator personally

That’s why I was delighted to spot Senator John Cornyn when I boarded my Southwest Airlines flight home.  As I was making my way to the back of the plane I saw him seated in the emergency exit row.  He realized I recognized him and quickly closed his eyes, feigning sleep.  Respecting his privacy I did not disturb him right then, but an hour later, 35,000 feet somewhere over Tennessee, I made my way back up the aisle and handed him a letter I’d just written asking him to sign a congressional letter urging President Obama to support the Global Fund! 

 

Mark Coats

Austin, Texas

July 3^rd, 2016

 

Your are cordially invited
RESULTS Austin 2015 Benefit 

Sunday November 8, 2015
Reception 2:00pm
Program 2:30-3:30pm

Seton Administration Offices’ Auditorium
1345 Philomena Street, Austin, TX 78723

Keynote Speaker
Jackson Ndegwa
Vaccines Development Advocacy Officer  
with Kenya AIDS NGOs Consortium

    Seeds of Hope Honoree
Congressman Michael McCaulfor his leadership on Maternal & Child Health

(not confirmed)

 

We have a vision of a world free from poverty

Donate or RSVP online

www.RESULTS.org

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Take Action Now!

We Must Protect Progress Made in Combatting TB/HIV

Tell Congress: Don’t Fast Track Bad Trade Deal!

The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) might be the worst trade deal ever for global health.

We say “might” because we’ve never actually seen the deal. The pact is being negotiated in secret. Even your elected representatives in Congress are only allowed to see the text is a special room after leaving their cell phones and staff outside, and forking over any notes they take before leaving - and agreeing not to discuss the details with anyone. [1]

We do know from leaked documents that the protections for intellectual property for medicines are far more aggressive than previous trade agreements. [2]

The availability of affordable, generic drugs has been critical in progress in the fight against HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis. The TPP threatens access to affordable medicines by expanding pharmaceutical companies' monopoly power and limiting competition from generic drugs. We need to strike a balance between protecting intellectual property rights to incentivize new drug development and protecting access to life-saving medicine. The TPP simply gets this balance wrong.

The President has asked Congress to grant him Fast Track Authority (or Trade Promotion Authority) to accelerate the TPP. This means that Congress would give up its authority to amend a trade deal and just hold an up or down vote on the final package. With so much at stake in the fight against HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis - and the text still behind locked doors - this is too much to ask.

Trade is an important part of economic growth and development, but not at the expense of public health. The Senate is expected to vote as early as this week, and they need to hear from you. So call Congress today, and ask them to slow down the TPP.

Will you call all of your members of Congress today and ask them to vote against the Fast Track Authority for the TPP? 

Follow this link for contact information for your members of Congress.