Betsy Bowman passed away on April 5. She was active in encouraging The Episcopal Church's Older Adult Ministries Task Force to include HIV/AIDS in its focus. As a member of that task force, I was grateful for Betsy's vocal presence on this issue. She also helped me understand just how critical the issue of sexual health and HIV/AIDS is in our senior communities. Here is an excerpt from her last blog post discussing her work. 

As a nurse, I am deeply concerned about the increasing numbers of seniors in our region who are living with HIV/AIDS or are newly diagnosed with the disease. Many people of my generation are naive when it comes to HIV. They assume it is an automatic death sentence, or a disease associated with younger people while, in fact, one of the growing populations with the disease is men over 60. The awkward truth is, people don’t talk about the fact that seniors are sexually active. But sex doesn’t die with age….nor do sexually transmitted diseases. “The Body” Web site offers useful information on Older People and HIV and Whitman-Walker Clinic has the facts on HIV/AIDS and older Americans.

There are a number of ways to get involved with helping older Americans. I’d like to see more people working together to address these issues—whether through the faith community, through the local health department or office on aging, or local nonprofits that focus on issues relating to aging. One very effective place to start is to lobby for funding and passage of the Older Americans Act, which is up for renewal this year.

Read the full post at The Community Foundation.