Alyson O’Daniel is an anthropologist and author of Holding On: African American Women Surviving HIV/AIDS.

How strong policies can improve guardianship

Health Policy
February 9, 2022

Millions of Americans each week watch as fictional television matriarch Rebecca Pearson, in the NBC-TV series, “This Is Us,” struggles with frustrations of early-onset Alzheimer’s disease and fear of an unknown health future. In the coming decades, millions more will experience this in real life.

Guardianship — or the care and legal control over another person’s life —may become one of the biggest issues of the next three …

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How strong policies can improve guardianship

HIV/AIDS vaccine underscores need for better health access

Health Policy
October 11, 2021

“HIV has been a blessing in my life.”

Lola was a 48-year-old woman living in Denver when I interviewed her in 2002 about her HIV-positive diagnosis. She said the diagnosis improved her life in important ways; she had received income and housing support, nutritional assistance, health insurance, medication assistance and primary and infectious disease health care based on that diagnosis.

She said her sense of life’s purpose had changed, her basic needs …

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HIV/AIDS vaccine underscores need for better health access