Katrina Haslip facts for kids

Katrina Haslip was an important educator and activist who worked to help people with HIV/AIDS. She played a key role in changing how the government recognized AIDS, especially for women. She helped start a group called AIDS Committee for Education (ACE) for women in a correctional facility. She also created ACE-OUT to help women after they left the facility.

Early Life and Activism

Katrina Haslip was born in 1959 in Niagara Falls, New York. She was one of 12 children in her family.

In 1985, Katrina Haslip was living at the Bedford Hills Correctional Center. While there, she worked as a law librarian. She noticed that there was a lot of incorrect information about AIDS. She also saw that women with HIV faced difficult conditions. Because of this, in 1988, she helped create ACE inside the facility. This group aimed to give correct information about living with HIV. She worked with other women, including Kathy Boudin and Judith Alice Clark, to make sure people got the right facts.

Fighting for AIDS Recognition

After leaving the correctional facility in 1990, Katrina Haslip continued her fight for AIDS awareness. She joined women from ACT UP NYC in a protest. ACT UP was a group that worked to bring attention to the AIDS crisis. Their goal was to make government agencies include women in studies about AIDS treatments. They also wanted the government to understand that AIDS affected women differently than men. For example, women could show symptoms like pelvic inflammatory disease and cervical cancer.

Also in 1990, a lawyer named Terry M. McGovern started a lawsuit. This lawsuit aimed to expand the rules for getting AIDS social security benefits. Katrina Haslip advised on this important work. Her efforts, along with the lawsuit, helped change the official definition of AIDS. In 1992, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) expanded its criteria to include conditions like bacterial pneumonia and cervical cancer.

After this decision, Katrina Haslip told The New York Times, "I am, and have been, a woman with AIDS despite the C.D.C. not wishing to count me. We have compelled them to." This showed her strong belief in making sure all people with AIDS were recognized.

Katrina Haslip also kept working with ACE. She started a new group called ACE-OUT. This group helped women who had left correctional facilities. ACE-OUT supported them in finding housing, getting medical care, and managing other parts of life after their time inside.

Later Life and Legacy

Katrina Haslip passed away on December 2, 1992, in Manhattan. She died from complications related to AIDS. The CDC's new, expanded definition of AIDS became official in January 1993. This meant that she was not officially recorded by the government as having died from AIDS under the new rules. However, her work was crucial in making those changes happen.