Impact of AIDS on Children and Families is Topic of Discussion
At Long Island University’s Brooklyn Campus, April 27

Brooklyn, N.Y. — "AIDS: Its Impact on Children and Families" will be the focus of a discussion by experts at Long Island University’s Brooklyn Campus.

The panel presentation will take place on Tuesday, April 27, in the Health Sciences Building, Room 119, from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. to be followed by a reception. Admission is free and open to the public.

Among the topics discussed will be Sesame Street education and programming on HIV/AIDS, international research, therapy for children and teens, biological, psychological and social perspectives, older adults and HIV, and cultural competence.

"When people think of HIV they usually think of adults, but AIDS is a family illness. Often, multiple family members are infected and all other family members are affected," says Nessa Obten, C.S.W., case management coordinator for the Lower New York Consortium for Families with HIV, who will serve as moderator. "There is a great deal of secrecy surrounding the illness because of social stigma.  This impacts profoundly on children and families; their secret isolates them. This panel will bring to light some of the issues that families and children have been facing."

  Dr. Charlotte Frances Cole, vice president for education and research at Sesame Workshop in New York, who oversees research and curriculum development on all the organization’s international co-productions, is a panelist. Sesame Workshop has done HIV/AIDS research in South Africa and then produced Sesame Street episodes designed to increase public awareness of the illness. Other panelists include Warren Ng, M.D., director of the Special Needs Clinic at Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital Center, and Amandia Speakes, M.S.W., from the Brooklyn Pediatric AIDS Network.

The event is presented by the Campus’s Social Work Department, Common Ground Service Learning Program, AIDS Service Center, Lower New York Consortium for Families, Haitian Women’s Program and the John A. Hartford Foundation. For more information, call Amy Krentzman of the Campus’s Social Work department at (718) 488-3372.

Long Island University opened its Brooklyn Campus in 1926, welcoming a diverse population at a time when other major universities enforced quota systems against racial and ethnic minorities. Some 30,000 students currently are enrolled at the university’s three residential and three regional campuses, including more than 11,000 at the Brooklyn Campus. Located at the corner of Flatbush Avenue Extension and DeKalb Avenue in Downtown Brooklyn, the Campus is accessible to all major bus and subway routes and the Long Island Rail Road.