Lutheran AIDS Network

Alicia Bunton is the Director of Care and Quality Improvement at the AIDS Foundation of Chicago. The AIDS Foundation of Chicago was founded in 1985 by community activists and physicians. It is a local and national leader in the fight against HIV/AIDS collaborating with community organizations to develop and improve HIV/AIDS services; fund and coordinate HIV prevention, care, and advocacy projects; and champion effective, compassionate HIV/AIDS policy.
Alicia’s commitment to caring for individuals living with and/or at-risk for HIV has remained constant since 1997. Alicia has been a provider of direct services for people living with HIV/AIDS as well as an administrator overseeing HIV prevention, care and education programs. Her most recent success is piloting an OWH funded Intergenerational HIV prevention pilot program for African American women through the lifespan. Having this unique perspective has better equipped Alicia to serve on numerous local and national planning bodies as well as serve on the national board for The AIDS Institute.
Alicia’s rich history with community planning began with the Chicago Area HIV/AIDS Services Planning Council. She served as its first female chair and subsequently chaired that group’s Priority Setting Committee for three years. She was then elected Community Co-Chair of the Chicago HIV Prevention Planning Group-this is significant because Alicia is the first female to have chaired both the HIV Care and Prevention Planning Groups in the city of Chicago. Under her leadership, the integration of Hepatitis C education and prevention became an un-funded mandate for all HIV prevention grantees.
Recognizing that HIV prevention and care are intrinsically linked, she created the HIV Prevention and Care Workgroup in collaboration between both aforementioned planning bodies and other key stakeholders. On the national level, Alicia chaired the Public Policy Committee for the Urban Coalition for HIV/AIDS Prevention Services-a coalition of directly funded jurisdictions by the CDC for two years.
Alicia received her undergraduate degrees in English and Communication Arts from Villanova University. She completed her graduate studies at University of Illinois in Communication Arts. Alicia is a trainer of trainers for HIV Counseling & Testing and Partner Counselor Referral Services recognized by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Emily Davila is Assistant to the Director of the Lutheran Office for World Community, a ministry of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America which represents the Lutheran World Federation at the United Nations in New York.

Kristine M. Gebbie, DrPH, RN is currently the Dean of the Hunter-Bellevue School of Nursing, City University of New York. Dr. Gebbie served as the AIDS czar during the Clinton Administration and as the Public Health Commissioner in the states of Washington and Oregon. She recently moved from the Columbia University School of Nursing, where she served as the Elizabeth Standish Gill Professor of Nursing and the Director of the Center for Health Policy. Dr. Gebbie is an elected member of the Institute of Medicine; a fellow of the American Academy of Nursing and of the New York Academy of Medicine; a member of the Board of Trustees, Lutheran Medical Center, Brooklyn; and a career-long member of the American Nurses Association.

Kari Hartwig has a PhD in public health from UNC at Chapel Hill and her master’s degree in international development from Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts. Her research in AIDS began in Tanzania in 1990 and was followed by 6 years working on an international HIV/AIDS prevention project including three years working from an Asia Regional Office in Bangkok, Thailand. For the past six years she has been an assistant professor at the Yale School of Public Health and a research scientist with the Yale Center for Interdisciplinary Research on AIDS and is currently working as an international health consultant. She has a number of publications on themes related to the governance of HIV/AIDS programming, women and AIDS, orphans and vulnerable children and the evaluation of AIDS programs.

Loretta Horton is the Director for Poverty Ministries Networking, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.

Kim Stietz is the director for International Policy, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, Washington, DC.

Pastor Judith Van Osdol is an ELCA pastor, serving Iglesia Evangelica Luterana El Milagro in South Minneapolis. She has recently returned the US after serving 14 years in Argentina as the Continental Director for Women’s Ministries and Gender Justice for the Council of Latin American Churches. Pastor Van Osdol is presently serving as a consultant to the United Nations on Gender Justice, Sexuality and Reproductive Health Rights, and Religion and Peace. Pastor Judith is a published author with many books published in both English and Spanish and has presented on Gender Justice and Women’s sexuality and reproductive rights at numerous assemblies in Latin America and around the world.

Adele Webb, PhD, RN, AACRN, FAAN is Executive Director of the Association of Nurses in AIDS Care (ANAC), and an Associate Professor at the Georgetown University School of Nursing and Health Studies. She holds a PhD in nursing from Wayne State University and completed her post doctoral studies in pediatric HIV at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey.  Her dissertation topic was the effect of stressful family situations on children’s peer relationships.

Dr. Webb taught pediatric nursing and family nursing for twelve years at The University of Akron where she was chair of the graduate curriculum.  Her clinical work spanned nearly 25 years including neonatal intensive care, pediatric emergency room and pediatric HIV care.  As one of the first Nurse Scholars at Henry Ford Health System, Dr. Webb served in a joint appointment, teaching graduate level courses at Oakland University and working in the HIV clinic at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, Michigan.
 
Dr. Webb served as a member of the expert panel that wrote the task shifting guidelines for the World Health Organization.  She currently serves on the expert panel for Maximizing Synergies in Global Health.  Dr. Webb is the author of 13 books on nursing theory and has published extensively in the HIV literature.  Her funded research on nursing students and stigma around HIV continues both nationally and internationally.  She has been honored with the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Association of Nurses in Aids Care, is a Robert Wood Johnson Nurse Executive Fellow and is a Fellow in the American Academy of Nursing.