Today in the UCSF@AIDS 2012 blog we turn our attention to two subjects that may at first glance seem unrelated: clinical care and activism. In fact they are intimately linked, as some of today’s posts will reveal.

To begin with, however, I thought it would make sense to give a comprehensive picture of what HIV care looks like today, so I turned to Annie Luetkemeyer, who gave me this overview:

“The good news is that HIV has really become a treatable, chronic disease,” she said. “What I tell patients when they come into clinic is that they can expect to live a long, healthy life as long as they engage in medical care, take good care of themselves, and take their medicines.”

Care is of critical importance as we head into the XIX International AIDS Conference next week because treating people with HIV is shown to both extend their lives and also reduce the spread of the virus — one of the reasons why the official declaration of the conference calls for expanded access to treatment. Read about it in the Washington D.C. Declaration.

Annie Luetkemeyer is an Assistant Clinical Professor of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) and Medical Director of the UCSF Positive Health Program at San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center (SFGH). She is also an attending physician in SFGH’s Positive Health Practice, an investigator in the Adult AIDS Clinical Trials Group (ACTG), and the director of the San Francisco General Hospital HIV Clinical Trials Group (HCTG).