Katrina Haslip

Katrina Haslip was an AIDS educator and activist who played an essential role in the campaign to change the criteria for government recognition of AIDS to include the symptoms uniquely experienced by women. She co-founded AIDS Committee for Education (ACE) for women incarcerated at Bedford Hills Correctional Facility for Women and its counterpart ACE-OUT for women leaving prison.

Early life Haslip was born in 1959 in Niagara Falls, New York and was one of 12 children. She was Muslim. While incarcerated Haslip served as a law librarian and became well known by other incarcerated women.

AIDS Advocacy Two weeks after her release from prison in 1990, Haslip broke her probation and joined women from ACT UP NYC to protest at the United States Department of Health and Human Services. The demonstration sought to pressure government agencies to include women in clinical trials of AIDS treatment and to recognize that HIV positive women displayed AIDS in ways that were unique from cisgender men – include pelvic inflammatory disease, persistent yeast infections, and cervical cancer. These expanded criteria are credited with increasing the number of women and intravenous drug users who were considered to have AIDS and eligible for disability benefits and laid the groundwork for further expansion to other symptoms exhibited by women. She collaborated with the producers Debra Levine and Catherine Gund on the project to ensure it represented perspectives of the women organizing and participating in ACE-OUT. As the CDC’s expanded definition of AIDS became active in January 1993 she was not officially registered by the government as dying of AIDS.