December 1, 2004 - For Immediate Release
Project Open Hand Serving More Women, People of Color, in Line with Global Trend
On December 1 -- World AIDS Day - local meal service provider Project Open Hand will see locally what the United Nations reports worldwide: increasingly, people living with HIV/AIDS are non-white and female.
Last week, a United Nations report showed that women now make up half of all adults living with HIV. In sub-Saharan Africa, almost 60 percent of adults living with HIV are women, and the largest increases of women with HIV have been in East Asia, Eastern Europe, and Central Asia.
Yet long-time local AIDS service providers such as Project Open Hand have been adapting to such demographic changes for some time.
"In 1985, when Project Open Hand started providing nutritional support to people with AIDS, our clients were almost exclusively gay, white men," says Artrese Morrison, Director of Programs at Project Open Hand's East Bay Kitchen in Oakland. "Now, in San Francisco, almost 11% of our HIV clients are women. But in Alameda County, that figure is closer to 26%."
Project Open Hand began as a nightly meal delivery service for people facing an almost-always fatal disease. In the early days of the AIDS epidemic, many of the afflicted faced malnutrition in addition to the disease's other symptoms, and Project Open Hand filled a need that wasn't being met: providing a nightly meal to people under 60 years of age. Over time, as the medications to treat HIV/AIDS became more effective, Project Open Hand continued to nourish people who were living longer lives, but the agency also found that there were new groups needing nourishment, especially in Alameda County.
"Over three-quarters of our HIV clients in Alameda County are African-American or Latino," Morrison says. "The food we provide has to help them with the increasingly complex drug regimens that are a reality for people living with HIV. But it also has to be something they look forward to. Because if the food isn't delicious as well as being nutritious, our clients won't eat."
So what kind of food can Project Open Hand's East Bay HIV clients look forward to? "Pork chops, crab cakes, corn and black bean chili, barbecue chicken," Morrison says. "Naturally, we provide special meals for people with dietary restrictions. But mainly we make the kind of food our East Bay clients like to eat."
Morrison adds that Project Open Hand's East Bay kitchen serves a number of women with HIV who are caring for children, so the food must appeal to younger tastes as well.
Project Open Hand was founded in San Francisco in 1985 by Ruth Brinker, a retired food service manager, who began serving a nightly dinner to seven friends dying of AIDS. To meet a continuously expanding need, the agency expanded its services and today provides 2,500 bags of groceries and over 11,000 meals each week to people in need in San Francisco and Alameda County. The first agency in the U.S. to provide "meals with love" to people with HIV/AIDS, it has served as a model for 150 similar agencies throughout the U.S. and worldwide.
Since 1985, Project Open Hand has served over nine million meals.
