Conference Promotes Consumer Leadership

Nearly 90 individuals gathered in July for the AIDS Leadership Institute, the second in a two-part series organized by AFC's Service Providers Council (SPC) and the Chicago Department of Public Health, Division of STD/HIV/AIDS. Service providers, advocates, and consumers discussed leadership topics such as how to involve a broad range of constituents in decision-making, especially people living with HIV/AIDS, and how to anticipate and plan for foreseeable organizational changes.

Terje Anderson, executive director of the National Association of People with AIDS (NAPWA) , provided the day's keynote address. Anderson noted that early in the AIDS crisis, people living with HIV/AIDS demanded that HIV-positive people have a role in shaping responses to the epidemic. As a result, many government-supported services now require a degree of consumer involvement. According to Anderson, tapping, nurturing, and fully utilizing this input is a critical leadership issue for the period ahead.

He noted that consumer leaders who lack training and support may need assistance representing the interests of the larger constituency of service recipients. NAPWA and other organizations are conducting HIV-positive leadership seminars toward preparing advocates and planning group participants for roles as consumer representatives in leadership positions. Anderson also illustrated various ways to promote consumer empowerment, such as forming agency consumer advisory boards, providing participants financial incentives, and sharing with consumer participants survey findings or a project's final outcome. Noting that many advances in the fight against AIDS resulted from activism by HIV-positive people, Anderson closed with a call for greater recognition and support for consumer involvement.

Participants ended the morning in small breakout sessions on marketing, running effective meetings, conducting supervision, and serving as mentors. Plenary speaker Patricia Moten Marshall of SynerChange Chicago closed the conference with an interactive, three-hour session on managing organizational change. The session combined open discussion, interactive exercises, video examples, and humor to illustrate how change in the workplace affects individuals and groups. By emphasizing open communication and strategic planning techniques, Marshall argued that addressing change head-on enhances rather than impedes productivity, innovation, and satisfaction in the workplace. In post-conference evaluations, participants gave Marshall's session high marks for usefulness and applicability.

AFC thanks the Chicago Department of Public Health, the John Marshall Law School, American Airlines, the Polk Bros. Foundation, and all the presenters and participants for making this series a success. For more tips on leadership from the May Leadership Institute session, select here.