(00:00:00) Since 1988 artists and people who work in cultural organizations as well as persons with HIV have come together in the Twin Cities through Arts / aids to respond to the impact of HIV on our community. One of Arts / AIDS areas of concern is to create informed work environments where employers and patrons affected by HIV find that they are welcomed supported and that their needs are understood. Today Arts / AIDS has brought together board members from local courts cultural organizations to talk about the importance of workplace responses to HIV as board members, the people gathered here today play an important role in providing the encouragement and the leadership Arts employers need to effectively respond to HIV/AIDS workplace issue many of these people are also leaders within their own workplaces and it is hoped that what is learned today will also help them consider opportunities to ensure workplace Readiness and their own places of employment. (00:01:08) Thank you, Bob, Tracy. The Centers for Disease Control is focusing on workplaces in its next major campaign to promote public awareness and knowledge about HIV and that campaign will be announced on December 1st, which is World AIDS day and here in Minnesota. It's also Arts over AIDS day. And we trust that you will all be participating in that a group of employers also participating in the Minnesota AIDS funding Consortium policy Forum on HIV last spring focused on the importance of preparing workplaces to respond to HIV/AIDS. That is the reason that we are gathered here. Today. We're going to be talking today about employers and cultural Employers in particular and how you and they can prepare themselves to respond to HIV in the workplace and perhaps learn a bit about the experiences that others have had in responding to HIV in the workplace that Is why our panel members are where they are because they have all done this in one form or another welcome to all of you and thanks for joining us today. Thank you Cynthia. Perhaps we could start with you since you were one of the early founders (00:02:25) of Arts / (00:02:26) AIDS and tell us how the effort has progressed in the years since its Inception (00:02:35) Arts / AIDS has in this wonderful sadly necessary way has progressed and progressed seems an odd word to use here in that the activities that we sometimes take credit for as Arts / AIDS and sometimes failed to take credit for are so many and are happening in so many different places and and for me, that's the Wonder of it that we live in a community rich and imaginative enough that includes the activities in the largest of our institutions. Those of us who are perhaps over institutionalized and know how to put together committees ad hoc, or otherwise to make things happen and those of us who are young and Scruffy and crazy enough that committees are always of the whole because there are only three people who get to take the tickets and plunge the toilets and going AIDS walks it is it's that I think that makes this an amazingly wonderful community of fizzy one to live in to be able to see those kinds of activities take place and and again perhaps this is a clumsy way to answer the question, but the fact that there are so many activities. We don't even know what is or isn't Arts / AIDS anymore. I think sadly and necessarily is the good news. (00:03:58) Hazel O'Leary, can you give us some sense of the struggles that you and your company had to go through in order to develop employee education programs about HIV and AIDS and specific health care benefits. Well, I feel that I represent the stodgy and the / / organized but that's a good point to be made because of the organization and the structures in an institution like NSP. There were very few problems encountered. I think if we failed in any way as a company, it was to recognize the proportions of the epidemic early on because they were other companies in the Twin Cities. Well ahead of us we have had for almost 75 years an employee Resource Center that deals with compassion with all employee issues health-related off family-related. So this was really this policy on AIDS An hiv-related illness was really an outgrowth of a philosophy that the company has had for some time. We had at that time a very enlightened medical director who did just what's been talked about pull together an ad hoc Committee of employees from our power plants. You have to know that some of our people deal in separating garbage and some of our people are dealing daily in very dangerous encounters to do two things. Number one approach what had then become the fear around the issue and number two to take the fear away and begin to approach the issue with compassion and education and so our standard at all has always been that we treat this health issue this epidemic as we do all with open education with compassion for the employee that relates to how you dress employment issues. You address the fear and we began with a very broad training effort and all of our power plants and all of our locations quite frankly. This was stimulated by one death in the company where people felt a great sense of sadness and also a sense of not knowing how to proceed it was then critically apparent that we needed to have folks talking about the issue. Hopefully we'll get into more specific procedures that NSP used in what other companies can do as well, but I want to ask Catherine Jordan. How the AIDS epidemic the HIV epidemic has affected the Arts community in our region (00:06:45) well much like what Cynthia is just share with us. This is a very personal situation. It's not something that we can serve in put aside or put on a shelf in an abstract way. It's a very personal situation. So it's hard to talk about I feel it right now. So as I can regain my composure, I think obviously talking about friends that are gone as a hard thing to do. I'd like to add also that in addition to this important loss not only of friends in individuals, but of the talent that's in this community, which is another I think dramatic situation not only here in the in the Twin Cities, but in in the rest of the country that we've also had to face things about our health care and how we treat artists and this in the world. We do not have the kind of health insurance or support for artists that we sometimes we don't have her a lot of other people but especially in this Arts Community. It is something that's come clear as we Face AIDS and HIV. We also have faced issues of obviously of homophobia. You cannot have a disease that somehow is like we say it was talking about Answer earlier being something that had great stigma 20 years ago and perhaps unfortunately even today but AIDS because it first hit the gay and bisexual Community was seen as a plague and has such moral implications that are in my mind not at all valid but have been used as a tool against people. So the Arts Community I think by facing those things and I think to our credit were able to take them on head-on not always it was not I think sometimes the attitude was that the Arts Community would be very well prepared for this epidemic and we were not and in fact, we had to start with ourselves. We had to start educating ourselves. We had look at the language of HIV and AIDS. We didn't know how to talk to each other about it. My background is in health and sex education and a lot of issues of talking about condoms talking about Actual experiences is just not something that we do and in Pleasant America or Minnesota. So having to get over a lot of those things facing our own fears and our own denial. We're incredible parts of this process. So I'm pleased to say that our surveys was a was a healing and is a healing process that we came together as a community tried to figure out what we needed to know and then decided once we could do that. We could go out beyond our own organizations in our own friendships and relationships. So it's that process of taking a step at a time and building that's really been helpful. Bob Tracey with art / AIDS and the question I have has to do with what motivates an employer to start to address HIV as a workplace issue. And hopefully to talk about motives motivations other than the loss of your first employee to the disease. Of course, there is many answers as there are employers and employees because each employer and it's each replace has its own culture. And therefore the answer is is not singular. But if I can take us back to the the Arts of the maybe the preamble to Arts / AIDS or the birth of Arts / AIDS, I think one thing that we do need to say to one another even if there are those of us fortunate enough to say that at this moment in time. We don't know anyone living with the virus that if we ask ourselves a set of questions as employers and his co-workers about what we might do in a certain set of sickness circumstances. I think we'd all have to admit that we are not as prepared as we might like to be and that we might know what would happen if someone has a car accident or someone calls because they need to take care of their mother for two days. But if we ask a series of other kinds of questions that are perhaps more specific to Our services and our beings as Arts organizations. We are not prepared with those answers. That was one of the motivating factors for me in dealing with this part of the not-for-profit community in particular because I was positively convinced because of the nature of what Arts organizations do and how they do it that we had we were feeling a little smug as though because we were families after all and I use that not in the necessarily positive sense that we would be prepared for anything. This is not anything. This is something that challenges us in a way we've never been challenged before (00:11:50) well, in fact Catherine Jordan brought up the fact that very often in the Arts community health insurance is non-existent. Just those kinds of hard and fast issues. I'd like to comment and want to say that I think it the motivators can be many. And we need to be very careful about not judging with the motivation is because we want to identify almost every button that we can push and encourage that be it that you have a very cost-conscious company that's looking at its insurance policy carrying cost and seeing them rise exponentially today over other issues and looking forward to what's happening in the future whether someone or two people in the company can bring the issue home whether it's a concern with respect to the safety and health of employees generally or whether it is a sad tragedy. We need to find and push all of those buttons what I've learned just here this morning and now I'm grateful for the invitation is we have a policy in place. That's far too old for we have not yet begun to really approach the issues about flexibility benefits that are going to meet the needs as we go as we progress further with this epidemic. So I'm taking Can home a lot we're not ready for the next step. We were not smug about being early in because I don't think we were early enough but I have learned a great deal many of these issues will carry forth and my company in terms of trying to look at the human side of this issue. This is especially true with respect to keeping people working for as long as possible. We have very flexible rules about sick leave but not flexible enough to handle this epidemic. So we've got a lot to do and I probably need help for many people in this room. I like to add a (00:13:49) one of the things that we did it in our server aids to kind of stimulate those buttons that you're talking about hazel. We felt that if we just did a simple thing like write a resolution seemed like something that other people do in politics and other ways and we thought maybe it was kind of benign enough but a motivator that would help organize the community. So we wrote up a resolution which we will be happy to send anyone and it basically the Preamble talks about, you know wanting to make sure that our Minnesota citizens are healthy and that HIV is something that is nothing that we can ignore and goes on to commit the organization to educate its Workforce and to put in in place a policy and to continue to update that policy and we thought well, we'll give it a try but we found that over the years numbers of organizations. I don't know where we are now probably over 20 or 30 Arts organizations have taken that pledge have signed that resolution and in fact Put in place those policies and that education. I think now the time is to go back to those organizations and to have them re-- recommit to that policy. But I think something as simple as that can help and I hope that that could be shared with the corporate Community as well that that a hundred percent of Minnesota WorkForce is has an AIDS policy has a catastrophic illness policy and has education in the workplace. I think again whether the issue here is to normalize this to not make it so frightening or so different. It's really part of of Our Lives unfortunately and we just have to take it (00:15:26) on to jump back in I think at least many of the larger companies already have the policy they have the employee human resources or Health Resources program to stand behind people who have a little have illnesses and their family or are ill with HIV or Aids. The related diseases but the real effort is with the individuals who don't who stand in judgment which has to be a piece of the diversity push. It's not the behavior. It's the heart set as well as the mindset and the only way we can get on that is through example and indicating that at least that behavior is not acceptable in the workplace. And that is a tough issue and when we have to continue to stay on simply because as has been pointed out when you carry the AIDS stigma generally you carry another and in this group and in all groups, we also have to remember not to cast ourselves as very special because we are the most talented or the most I don't know professional and forget about the people of color who have never had income who've never had Insurance who suffer this disease with with perhaps three or four stigmas. So there's a lot of human emotion roiled up in this issue that sometimes we each Miss we each miss the others piece, I think. We have a question from the audience what Arts organizations should one look to to find the best personnel and health policies regarding AIDS these specific do we have models here? Well, I'd like to start on that. I think (00:17:15) it's really important not to think that there's a blue print out there that that there's one policy or one organization. That is the the model that we are all going to duplicate. I think that's really just a bad idea. What we found is that every organization has its own environment its own culture. We really strongly recommend that a task force or some group within the community of that workplace comes together to start to address these issues in a way that makes sense for that organization. So I as much as that we'd like to maybe we'd like to it might be easier to just copy and the Xerox machine that policy and give it out to her one. That isn't going to work. It really has the process is so important and how you develop (00:17:59) Of the policy how you get buy-in and ownership (00:18:02) of the policy that we just wouldn't recommend copying. Someone else's I think there are ways you can you can talk to other people and talk about how that process happened. We Arts are great certainly has information to help you and so does the Minnesota AIDS project and others in the country are in the state, but I really would like to dissuade us from taking a copy of someone else's policy (00:18:29) doing business, of course is often a matter of economics and we heard the Minnesota Supreme are the federal Supreme Court last week upheld an appeals court ruling that basically said a company could change benefits in the middle of the stream. This is an involved a person with AIDS the company benefit had been up to a million dollars of medical treatment. It was changed after he developed the HIV virus to a 5 thousand dollar cap when the Supreme Court says it's alright for companies to do that does the matter then become more political than internal to a (00:19:13) company? Yes, (00:19:17) obviously does that then mean that if your organization is concerned about this that you must become political about it? Yes again. May I twist your question (00:19:33) slightly (00:19:34) course people do (00:19:38) they don't always ask permission which I just did there are well, I know there are people in this room who have heard this before but one of the the great wake-up calls I got was this was before Arts. / AIDS was twinkle in anybody's eye. I got a call from an organization in some an executive director of an organization in New York, which shall go nameless but everybody in the room and recognize it a very important cultural organization. These are very smart people incredibly dedicated. They support the work of terrific artists and someone in the organization had been diagnosed at that point. I think we were talking about other we were using other terms to find what this was. But in any event the founder of the organization went to the executive director and said, Nobody in this group is going to get Public Assistance ever. So take care of it. And that was about six months before I got the call and dutifully the executive director did that and thought well, we are a family after all we take care of our own the cost of course of age and this was even before AZT were three letters that meant anything to anybody in the room much less didd. See any of those things the cost was so terrific that it was about to bankroll the organization. I mean literally bankroll, what's the word? I'm looking for - grand (00:20:57) grand. Hello, (00:21:00) and it was of it was an amazing. This was a microcosm of something much bigger, of course, but the will to do it was there but the cost was so terrific that this is maybe the other sad side of the situation you described you can want to do that. All you want it will take your entire budget. If you've got a couple of people who become infected over the year and Have any way of taking care of it and I are not living in a state or wish to rely on public assistance. So I think in that way to we need to become politicized not only in areas of public policy, but lowercase p Gail. (00:21:41) My name is Gail Ober. I'm an immediate past board member of the chamber Saint Paul chamber orchestra and past president of the Minnesota crowd. I'm also a member of the funding community and I have a question directed it Catherine can United Arts serve as some kind of a Clearinghouse organization to help small and mid-sized Arts organizations. Join in groups to acquire better and more Comprehensive Health Care. Coverage mean that's a that's a huge question, but it came up often in the Minnesota crowd being a very small organization with two employees and no health coverage. Well, that's a wonderful question and an important one. (00:22:22) There are people in the room here who have worked hard and long on trying to figure out how we can do a better job of delivering health insurance and health care to the Arts Community is is not a simple situation the National Endowment for the Arts is also done some work on that currently and I Arts covers a number of organizations in the Twin Cities through our umbrella policy and we are investigating whether we can afford to do more of that the larger group we have the better off everyone in the group is so that's something that we certainly would like to investigate. We need the resources and the you know, the human resources and financial ones just to get that organized so I don't have a an absolute answer for you right now, but it's something that someone has to do I I'm hoping that we really look to a national health policy that this is this is not just the Arts Community. We're only one part of a very large. Problem which affects many many Americans and if we cannot deal with that at the federal level, I'm think it's still going to be Band-Aid attempts at a smaller level. So I'm hoping with the new Administration that we're really going to see some progress on that and until that time I'd be happy to talk about other (00:23:37) options. This question kind of goes along with that and what is the different what is different or the same about dealing with HIV and AIDS in the workplace versus other chronic debilitating and sometimes fatal illnesses like cancer and diabetes multiple sclerosis. Are we talking about the same thing here? (00:24:05) One of the biggest differences and perhaps the most obvious is that may be particularly in this community given the population and those people who have been heretofore affected by HIV and AIDS where we are talking about things were not used to talking about sexual practices sexual orientation. It leads us often to discussions of race that are difficult and maybe bring out the most homophobic the most terrified moments in all of us. I think that probably is the biggest difference. I think there are some more subtle ones. However, and what Lorraine said I think is incredibly important about people living with HIV and AIDS, maybe well one day very sick the next well sick well sick and we we don't talk very often publicly. But I think many of us have had to deal with this nightmare of AIDS related dementia and what that means and when you've made pledge to yourself for you to your staff or to your friends that you will stand by and they'll have worked as long as as they physically can do that and you realize that physically is only part of the equation you're finding ourselves in some very very difficult territory where you may be putting an organization at risk now just yourself as an employer by allowing someone to work who is not any longer of sound mind, but can show up in a suit everyday and those are the things that we don't find in policies, but are incredibly real (00:25:40) Isn't there some similarity though, especially between the well sick. Well, (00:25:45) sick area people (00:25:48) with multiple sclerosis fall into that category at times people undergoing chemotherapy treatment may be sick for a period of a few months and then are able to come back are there policies in place at companies to deal with those kinds of issues? Yes. There are I was thinking as you were asking that question about several employees in 1990 and 91 in our company who had tremendously debilitating life life-threatening accidents and dealing with the contact with high voltage electric wires, two or three of those individuals have were out of work for Eight or nine months then back in we have a policy in a program that says if you can no longer do the work for which you were assigned than the company moves you on to what is euphemistically called light duty, which means that the employee with lots of help from the supervisor and probably not even the area where he or she has worked is assessed and placed in a new work environment. The the task is always to try and not reduce pay that does not always happen. I see a corollary there as well and we've done that with employees who've been in and out of work. Now the truth of the matter is that more likely than not those employees are not received with open arms in the new work environment. So a lot of support has to go behind both the employee and the workers in that new unit to have that employee accept it and be a part of that work environment. I see a corollary there and I think we can use the skills that we've used in other cases to tackle these issues as well. I can see where that would be a possibility in an organization like northern states power Dayton Hudson Foundation when you're talking about a company or an organization a nonprofit that has 25 or fewer employees. That becomes a lot more difficult (00:28:00) Catherine. Yeah, I'd like to respond to that it I think the legal issues here are that organizations are corporations over 50 employees have certain requirements to be able to bring that employee back into the workforce organizations under 50 have just don't have the resources so becomes a very different kind of issue. I think Cynthia talked about a little bit earlier that you the will is there you want to hopefully bring that person back in but let's say you're an artistic company. You have two or three artistic. - maybe one clerical person to have one of those people and that has happened already in this community become ill and not really be able to function it can really destroy the company. It can take major turns that really have an enormous impact. So it's not just the health of the individual. It's really the health of the organization we're talking about here and can we find some creative ways to allow those organizations to continue to find ways of supporting the artistic talent through that process and when that person is not able to work, how do we assist that organization either making change or adapting in some way? So it's a very different experience for smaller organizations, which most of us are involved within the Arts. I don't think it excuse me. Well, I was going to say I don't think it's only about size. However, I think a distinct disadvantage that a not-for-profit and I mean that not only an Arts organization but a not-for-profit organization has is this feeling That we're supposed to know how to do this and it that we shouldn't reveal our ignorance and I think it I can't say it enough. I think it's a huge disadvantage whether you're talking about the size of the Minnesota Orchestra or you're talking about a chamber quartet that in fact to be able to say I'm scared to death because I don't want to sit next to you might seem easier in a corporation where that is in and I mean, this is a compliment now is invited it's easy to say that you're not supposed to say that if you're dancing next to this person seven days a week, you're not supposed to say I'm scared and therefore you don't always and and part and parcel of that is this policy issue that I've just obsessed about but that we don't have policies because we think we're family and we're just going to take care of it. It's not true and what happens if the person who gets sick is the founder and the person who's generated the choreography of the group. Do we make one decision, but if The dancer we hired last week who didn't show up three days because he was on a binge and isn't a very good dancer after all do we make another decision now? I'm not joking about that you all know what goes on in your organization's and the tendency would be to make one kind of decision one for one person and another for another and I'm not sure that's what we should be (00:30:54) doing. I don't want to leave this question without asking maybe each of you to think about the possibility of some Cooperative effort with respect to people who are working and able to work sometimes and not others and perhaps you could as a family think about some pool for people who were ready and able to work so you wouldn't have to each depend upon your own organization. I think have the will hear as you've already talked about some group effort to self-insure, which I think is something that you you may have to look into because as good as we believe the Clinton Administration is going to be Not going to be on all issues the first two three years, but I'd like to encourage you to at least give that a thought there is so much creativity in the room. Perhaps that's a place to begin. My name is Sage coals and I wanted to go back to the question of life threatening diseases and do we treat (00:31:55) cancer HIV virus diabetes and so forth all the same and (00:32:01) I think a major difference between those in those disease in that range. I think is that some are perceived to be infectious and that cancer can be today still regard as infectious. Somebody who works on a Cancer Ward just told me of a person recovered. This is recently went back into society was invited to a (00:32:21) beautiful lunch party (00:32:23) with many people there everybody and lunch party was served on China with silverware. She was served her meal on (00:32:29) plastic dishes with plastic forks and spoons. (00:32:33) This is cancer. This is today (00:32:36) and you can multiply that a thousand fold in terms of fears. I'm sure about how do you deal with and the question of education has come up several times. So I'm curious. Very specific education will programs that are going on now in businesses and organizations. (00:32:59) Okay, fine. Well, I'll talk about the program at NSP which attempts to find people where they are which is in the workplace. And as you mentioned Sage frightened to death so you have to start with things as simple as you cannot contact HIV HIV related illnesses by touching the telephone by shaking hands just have to have added at the most simple level and I think you're exactly right. It's the fear of quote infection, but it's also the fear of unknown each of us have a personal story and I'll tell you one years and years ago. I had a disease called or people thought I had salmonella and I was hospitalized and placed in one of those horrible little rooms and isolated and everyone who came in to see me Don gloves and masks and put on shoes and I had plates that were then thrown away. Being black being female. None of that made his biggest impression on me as the the week that I was quote infectious. So I personally have a sense of what it feels like to be shunned if you can through case study and role-playing get others to feel that way for one moment than it helps a bit and we use lots of those techniques and all of you know, the blue eye brown eye piece that used always and diversity. And so we role play a lot to have people understand what it feels like to be on the other side, but also to have the knowledge of what is and what is not unsafe Behavior. This gets more complex as I've indicated as we have people dealing with garbage and from time to time coming upon needles that have nothing to do with their own employees. So it's very important that we have those employees well educated and understanding where there are risks and whether or not (00:34:54) It remains a complicating Factor. However, how the infection occurs in HIV and AIDS as opposed to the examples that you gave and that part of it is very tough and our unwillingness to talk about that or recognize it and to be scared and have people wonder how he got it which does not happen with cancer. It nobody gives a rip. It just isn't in the cards once it's there it's there but this other issue about how he got it remains and remains and remains and causes people to think crazy things and worry about things in crazy ways. And I don't I really don't think we can Overlook the power of homophobia and what it meant the manifestations of the power of homophobia. If I could talk a little bit about some of the education things that Arts / AIDS has done in the early years, and I we do it now in different ways, but we brought together the Arts Community to have an education. Session and we did small groups and we talked about our fears and we had people from Minnesota. It's project in the Red Cross come and give us information about HIV and how it is transmitted. And so I think again there are ways of doing that in basic levels in addition to that. We started commissioning artists to work with people with AIDS or HIV positive people to create new artwork and I think the learning experience of that head and has for people to really investigate this in their creative art making is a way of learning about it. That really is extraordinary. I'm you you can talk about all you want. But when you really sit down and create a piece of work or are involved in with a person who is hiv-positive has or who has AIDS it's a whole nother level. So I think that what we learned throughout the processes sitting down person to person with someone who has HIV is a very important thing to have happened. I think that helps overcome a lot of Stigma and a lot of the fear and denial and that has been part of our (00:36:58) process. The Minnesota AIDS project has made education a top priority continuing education isn't there a tendency among most organizations to say? Well we did that back in 1987 or 1988 is it I would think imperative to continue those kinds of educational efforts assuming that you he'll always have a continual influx of new employees who may not have had that information. Even if you never have turnover in an (00:37:30) organization because of the nature of HIV and AIDS you absolutely have to do that this disease with the knowledge we have about this disease are available to us changes by the moment. In fact, I was thinking about this yesterday because I got my recent issue of treatment issues, which is put out by the Gay Men's Health crisis in New York and I start subscribing a couple of years ago when I was involved as a care partner to someone who was at that moment. I had a lot of different things available. The him that hadn't been available to the person I cared for the year before and I mean, I'm somebody who's very interested in the topic who gets who has this subscription who reads it? I know that I'm about 20% there. I just can't keep up and so it and I've stayed in the same organization for 10 years. I just think this hopefully will continue to be true as we have more treatments and more medications available to us. We can't know everything about the nature of this disease once check it off the to-do list and then not have to think about it for the rest of our lives. If I could add to that. I think part of the challenge here is to keep this on the front burner. I think that there's a tendency as we've just said that once you've done it once or you've had the workshop we've had the lecture that you don't need it anymore and it it is something that we have to continually remind ourselves and become involved with that. This is an ongoing process just like sexuality education is a lifelong process for all of us and we tend to think that Birds and bees lecture is going to do it and that's just not true with this either (00:39:05) in our company. We have a requirement because there's so many of us that annually there is diversity training and it has to do with all differences which is a place where this can get done. But the other idea that has struck me and being here today is that we're focusing on the known and we're not focusing on prevention the other gift I take away from this session is that's where a company like mine needs to be spending all the time and we're still so hung up in the morality of talking about this but we haven't even stepped up to this issue. We need to be doing that for not only our employees but our public in general we need to be doing that in the schools. So I again I need some help somebody needs to please give me some advices where does to as to where to start and where in other communities have more Progressive attitudes. And on the prevention piece, that's a service. I think that large corporations can provide and maybe we can make a partnership and doing trying to tackle that one. I'd certainly again like to think about that as an opportunity for partnership. So what you're saying is that there is there is no Central Clearinghouse for information where employers Human Resources people can go to get ideas. It has to start with individuals. Yes. Exactly. And I'm thinking not so much of our own employees. I'm thinking about our communities. I'm thinking about those youngsters yet in high school and grammar school who need to be getting some kind of message and we haven't figured out a what it is and finally who the heck's going to pay for. I'm Catherine de I'm here as a board member of the illusion theater and I just wanted to respond to what Hazel's just talking about. I've had the pleasure of attending the latest prevention work of the illusion Theater, which has done a great deal of work over the years in the area of prevention working with high schools and junior high level as well as some collaborations with some law the law firm of robins Kaplan Miller and Sarah see on the issue of sexual harassment, but - work Wonderland is all about healthy sexuality and really does attempt to address a lot of the questions that you're raising right now. It is trying to make it possible to talk about very touchy subjects. (00:41:33) They use a lot of explicit (00:41:35) language and explicit behavior issues to address this. I found it very approachable for me as an adult. I was in the audience at O'Shaughnessy (00:41:45) and it was a really diverse group of people (00:41:48) and the young people in the room. We're getting a lot out of it. And I think there's a great need for a lot more of this kind of programming and what the illusion theaters doing is just scratching the surface of what needs to be done. I also think that what they're doing with the (00:42:02) collaborations with the law firm on the issue of sexual harassment can be (00:42:07) adapted to the workplace. And I think that's that what happens when you're able to see this act it out on stage by people who Giving you Alice trations, it breaks down a lot of barriers and that's been my experience in participating in those programs. Thanks for the tip following. Maybe we need more lose in theaters. Yes. My name's Linda Hassler. I'm executive director of the Minnesota composers forum. And I've had a few thoughts as I've listened to the conversation this morning one is and I think it's been touched on is the cost of AIDS to the mid-size Arts organizations. We are considered midsize with a budget of half a million a year and seven employees for from work part time. We offer health benefits to all I work for midsize Corporation before that the definition that was a 250 million dollar company with 20,000 employees. So I think within the scale that board members and executive directors. It's one thing to feel compassion. It's one thing to to have offer health benefits, but it's another thing when it does come to this in and out employment that I don't think we thought of and can't frankly afford to think of and it's going to be will be hard hit at the time the other issue though that I think we're addressing today. Which is to try to involve our board members and thinking about AIDS is an I just talked to one of our board members. I tried to invite people who were managing corporations are board members and I asked one of our board members where we've talked actually on the corporate board about doing AIDS awareness. He said well, I guess it's time now because he said we do have a number of homosexual employees. I think that is still a problem we have in this and we have to agree with Arts / AIDS which is saying, you know starting with the Arts organizations again reading the statistics about the gay or bisexual community and I think of an editorial I read Years Ago by black editor of Newsweek who said get with it White America you tend to see the drug problem the out of wedlock problem. And now the AIDS problem is black problems. Unfortunately, the black community tends to be on The Cutting Edge of potential social disasters and Once and White America will not deal with it until it's their problem. I think as I talked to my board and as I think as we all talk to our employees, we should be talking about the issue not in terms of gay and bisexual or particularly affecting the artist, but we need to stress the growth of it within teenagers today the growth of it of among women today. We need to reach out ourselves when we're thinking about it and broaden our own thinking and I think that's behooves us all. Thank you. anyone else Otherwise, I think we'll ask Bob Tracy to come back up and let's panelists have any final thoughts that they want to leave us with today just one which is that each of us count. Each of us can make a difference and we can start that today. Thank you to all of you. (00:45:26) I'll go ahead and if you want to just stay up here, I'll be just a few minutes here. Thank you Paula for your help. And again thanks to each of our panelists. I have three remarks that like to cover in our closing minutes here one is to respond to the issue that came up earlier regarding the recent Supreme Court decision. The second is to talk about what difference does it make to address HIV in your workplace for a person infected by HIV and finally and most importantly perhaps is to give you some sense of what's in this magic Little Packet that we've given you today because I think that many of the questions and issues that we talked about today. There are some not answers, but at least some ideas to give you Direction in this packet, but first regarding the Supreme Court ruling the situation, there was a employer In Oklahoma that was self-insured and therefore the insurance activity of that the benefit that that company was providing in terms of insurance was not a provider since it was not provided by a commercial insurance firm. It was not regulated by state law rather was regulated by federal law, which was Ursa Ursa. Simply does not address any issues with regards to the reduction of health insurance in the manner that that employer chose to reduce it. So, in fact, I have to say I agree with the Supreme Court decision. It was certainly within the Earth's the standards. What's frightening and all of this is that most recent figures that we have are several years old where half of the Employers in this country were moving to self-insured plans the estimate now, is it probably 70% have moved to self-insured plans. We're talking about insurance benefits to employees that are unregulated by state governments and the federal government policy and the federal laws that govern those do not address this sort of discriminatory issue. So if we want to give the Clinton Administration something I real immediate to work on its to look at what's happening with self-insured plans that are essentially unregulated. Why is it important to do this sort of work from the perspective of a person with HIV? Six years ago I tested positive for HIV and at that time I found that I can only talk to this with my very very closest friends and my first year living with HIV or at least with the knowledge that I had HIV was probably the hardest because everything was hidden and I lived with great fears fears that if I shared this information, I would lose friends fears that if I shared it with my employer I would risk my health benefits that I would somehow be treated differently in the workplace. Not only in terms of discrimination because of assumptions about and opinions about my sexual orientation. Most of those assumptions would have been right, but I wouldn't have agreed with some of the opinions But also concerns about not getting the sort of work assignments that I was fully capable of doing but because of a misunderstanding or lack of awareness or understanding about how this disease works there would be an assumption that I couldn't take on those assignments. I was fortunate enough to be in a workplace that not by active great benevolence, but simply because it's it was an organization that engaged itself with Community issues that organization had to become engaged with HIV. So it was in the course of doing its work that the workplace became aware about HIV. And I'm grateful for that because if they had not been informed about HIV they would never have taken on the effort to establish workplace policies to educate my co-workers to adopt a workplace policy to create an environment in which I could comfortably come forward and say I have HIV and it's my issue and as an employer, there's not a whole lot you can do about that except support me. I should also talk about the role of Arts / AIDS in that process to it. It was through Arts / AIDs that I found a community of support where it became apparent that I had no real fears or could not necessarily justify my fears that I would not find people in my work environment who could support me who would be with me and care enough about this issue not only for my personal health, but because of the impact that the this epidemic is having on many in our community, so it was helpful to have that environment of support helpful in that it helped me get by some of my fears. It has an Allied concerns about health care access. But at least it's given me access to information and my employer at least is thinking about those issues. Most importantly though both poor person with HIV but also for your own workplaces. Is it creating that environment where person with HIV can step forward and continue to be an active and participant in the workplace open about their HIV situation brings forward people who can provide leadership to help fight the epidemic I think that any of the employers who participated on our panel would agree that probably the most effective HIV educator in the workplace is a person with HIV who is able to make that a personal issue for each and every one of their co-workers.