2025 Odyssey events

Description: Over 50 percent of people living with HIV in the U.S. are older than age 50. By 2030, we expect this percentage to rise to 70 percent in some parts of the country. Unique challenges requiring specialized care and support emerge as the HIV community ages. Effective management should take a holistic approach that goes beyond medication to address the broad needs of people aging with HIV.

This presentation will cover:

• The intersection of HIV and aging, including common health concerns and quality-of-life considerations.
• A firsthand account of lived experience from a person aging with HIV.
• Actionable steps to support the community.

After the training, participants will be able to:

• Identify key demographic trends and epidemiological data related to aging and HIV in the U.S. and Minnesota.
• Define common health concerns and unique challenges for people aging with HIV.
• Describe available resources, services and best practices to support the health and well-being of people aging with HIV.

About the presenters:
Bridgette Picou, LVN, ACLPN, is a licensed vocational and certified AIDS Care Nurse in Palm Springs, California. She works for The Well Project as the stakeholder liaison, representing the interests of women living with and affected by HIV in medical, research, policy, and advocacy spaces. Bridgette is a director at large for ANAC (the Association of Nurses in AIDS Care), and a sitting member of the board of directors for HIV & Aging Research Project-Palm Springs (HARP-PS). Her column in Positively Aware magazine is her unique and feminine take on life while navigating a positive HIV status and frame of mind. Sitting at the intersections of being Black, a woman, and living with HIV, her goal is to remind people that there are lives being lived behind a three-or four-letter acronym.

Terri L Wilder, MSW, is the Manager of Health and Economic Security Policy at SAGE. In this role, she develops and advances SAGE’s comprehensive health and economic security policy agenda, with a focus on LGBTQ+ older people and older people living with HIV. Her work centers on federal, state, and local administrative and legislative advocacy goals that are both practical and impactful.

Terri has worked in HIV care and services since 1989, providing social services, directing education programs for clients and healthcare providers and advocating for policy change. She is an experienced public speaker who has presented at conferences around the world on a variety of HIV topics. An award-winning writer, she has published extensively on HIV-related issues, including contributions to TheBodyPro website.

Her policy leadership includes serving on the New York Governor’s Task Force to End the Epidemic (ETE) and the New York Governor’s Hepatitis C Elimination Task Force, where she helped shape state plans to end the HIV epidemic and eliminate Hepatitis C. She is currently a member of the New York State Department of Health AIDS Advisory Council (ETE) subcommittee and recently completed her term on the Minnesota Council for HIV/AIDS Care and Prevention (MCHACP).

Terri’s contributions have been recognized through The POZ 100: Celebrating Women edition of POZ magazine (2017), as well as awards from the NYS Department of Health AIDS Institute, AIDS Survival Project, and Bridging Access to Care, Inc. She also serves as a Senior Lecturer at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Social Work, where she teaches courses on Human Sexuality, Gender and Sexuality, Queer Theory, and Healthcare Policy.

Continuing education: The Minnesota Board on Aging approves this webinar to count for 1.5 hours and 1.5 social work continuing education unit (CEU) credits.

Description: This session offers tools and best practices to help design educational programming, arts events and community spaces to be accessible and welcoming to people of all ages and abilities. Learn how to prepare your environment, culture and curriculum to be the most accessible for the most diverse community through a lens we call S.M.I.L.E. (sensory, movement, identity, language, experience). When we all prepare and S.M.I.L.E., we start developing richer connections and relationships. 

About the presenter: Julie Guidry (she/her/hers), co-founder, executive director and teaching artist - Julie has worked in the disability and nonprofit communities since 1997. She is the co-founder and executive director of Upstream Arts, an innovative nonprofit organization that uses the arts to help people with disabilities develop social and communication skills. Founded in 2006, Upstream Arts is a place where people with disabilities, the arts and education come together. Julie and her husband, Matt, started Upstream Arts after they saw the positive impact the arts had on their son’s self-expression and communication with those around him. Each year Upstream Arts works with more than 100 partners and serves more than 5,000 people of all ages and abilities. Since Upstream Arts started, Julie works closely with disability service providers and community organizations as well as special education directors and arts departments in the Minneapolis public school district . Together, they developed a model to integrate Upstream Arts’ unique arts-based curriculum into social skills learning, vocational and career development training and other disability services. 

Julie leads trainings on arts-based instructional strategies, universal design for learning, access and inclusion for social service organizations, school districts and arts organizations. She held management positions with several disability and youth organizations, including Wilderness Inquiry and Youth Frontiers. Julie is a member of the Minneapolis Public Schools Special Education Advisory Council and previously served on both the District Parent Advisory Council and Access Advisory Council. She also has been on the Arts on Chicago leadership team for the last eight years and is a founding board member and former board chair of Wonderlust Productions. 

Continuing education: The Minnesota Board on Aging approves this webinar to count for 2.0 hours and 2.0 social work continuing education unit (CEU) credits.