Ditch Dybul, the Abstinence-Only AIDS Coordinator

President Obama, we know how much you care about HIV and AIDS prevention globally. We also know that you value evidence-based solutions to public health challenges. The fight against HIV and AIDS globally requires an evidence-based, public health approach to stopping the spread of HIV, one that promotes both health and human rights. Public health professionals, medical associations, physicians, research scientists, reproductive health advocates and scholars all agree: successful prevention = evidence-based prevention methods %u2013 not personal ideology. The U.S government's own studies conclude that promoting abstinence-only programs as part of our global AIDS plan "undermines efforts on the ground." In other words, we should do what works, not what some think should work!

But under PEPFAR (the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief) President Bush's Global AIDS Coordinator, Mark Dybul, took a bad law and made it worse by supporting policies and funding programs based on ideology rather than evidence, undermining effective HIV prevention for years to come.

Yet against the better judgment of so many reproductive health advocates and others, President Elect Obama, you have agreed to keep Mark Dybul on as coordinator of our global AIDS prevention efforts.

President Obama, we need a Global AIDS Coordinator who will promote the successful public health programs we know you support - programs that are evidence-based and not tied to personal ideology! Please Ditch Dybul and bring on a Global AIDS Coordinator who gets it.