Press room ... 1997 archive

Project Inform and WISE Announce Establishment
of Women and HIV Program at Project Inform

April 21, 1997

San Francisco, CA—Today Project Inform and the Women’s Information Service Exchange (W.I.S.E.) announced that the Executive Director of W.I.S.E., Dawn Averitt, will be leaving the Atlanta-based organization to join the Information and Advocacy Department at Project Inform, on 21 April 1997. Dawn Averitt’s experience as a women’s AIDS treatment advocate will expand and enrich Project Inform’s Information and Advocacy Department, where she will coordinate a new advocacy program called Project WISE as well as contribute to efforts in Project Inform’s ongoing work on AIDS-related conditions.

As a consequence of this hire, the Atlanta-based organization will dissolve, yet efforts are underway to insure that services to women living with HIV/AIDS in the Atlanta area are not diminished. Additionally, Project Inform will be expanding its publications to include a new monthly newsletter, WISE Words, emphasizing treatment issues of concern to women living with HIV. As with all of Project Inform’s information, this new publication will be available free of charge to all those who request it.

“We view this as an exciting opportunity to expand treatment information services to women living with HIV,” remarked Martin Delaney, Founding Director of Project Inform. “Through the extensive and established National Town Meeting Program, the Project Inform HIV/AIDS Treatment Information Hotline, the Project Inform Website and publications program we feel overnight we will be able to greatly increase the size of the audience that WISE currently reaches with HIV/AIDS treatment information as well as expand the spectrum of information services available to these women.”

“This move marks an expansion of many of the activities of WISE,” noted Dawn Averitt, Executive Director of WISE. “Establishing a program focused on women’s issue at Project Inform, the nation’s leading HIV/AIDS treatment information and advocacy organization, will enhance the information currently available to women through Project Inform. This transition is a winning situation, improving the quality and quantity of treatment information reaching women living with HIV/AIDS.”

Currently WISE Words, a publication of WISE, reaches an audience of about 2000 women. Approximately 30% of the 50,000 calls received on the Project Inform HIV/AIDS Treatment Information Hotline are from women. Also, upwards of 25% of people regularly receiving PI publications, approximately 60,000 people annually, are women. Project Inform’s award-winning website, which received 65,000 ‘hits’ in January of 1997 alone, is accessible throughout the world. Among the top 20 topics most commonly accessed through the Website is information on gynecological manifestations of HIV disease, suggesting women and their health care providers are accessing PI treatment information through the internet.

“While we have consistently received excellent feedback from the women that we serve,” noted Annette Brands, Executive Director of Project Inform, “we feel we could be doing an even better job. The knowledge-base that Dawn brings with her on issues of women and HIV will undoubtedly improve Project Inform’s services to women. She will also enhance our ability to better serve our constituents treatment information needs regarding AIDS-related opportunistic infections, another area which we feel deserves increased attention."