Fighting AIDS among Recovering Substance Abusers

Rusti Miller-Hill - USA

Nov. 30, 2007—Russelle (Rusti) Miller-Hill’s philosophy is simple and to the point: “I found that to help myself, I needed to help other women.”

She’s been doing so since she learned she was HIV positive a decade and a half ago.

At the time, Rusti says, “there weren’t a lot of services available. I think I was my doctor’s first female patient. Together, we learned about the diagnosis and how it affected women.”

Rusti’s is a story of bad breaks, bad decisions and, eventually, redemption. She contracted HIV through sexual contact. After hearing her diagnosis, she started using drugs. She was arrested, sent to a New York state penitentiary and released two-and-a-half years later, determined never to return. She was going to make something of herself and help other women in the process, particularly women who were substance abusers and ex-offenders, women like herself.

“The commitment is based on the fact that women are invisible,” she says. “You have a voice, but most women feel that they don’t. It’s about empowering them and giving them tools.”

Rusti does that in a number of ways, in her job and as a volunteer. She earns a living as a reproductive health educator at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York. She describes herself as an “internal navigator” and an advocate for women who are pregnant, who have cervical cancer, who have abnormal Pap smears or who need help cutting through red tape and medical lingo. She is vice president of the board to the Women’s HIV Collaborative of New York City, she works in a methadone clinic, and she is striving to reopen a transitional home that she founded in Brooklyn for women substance abusers who are re-entering society after prison. The 21-bed facility closed in 2007 for lack of funding, but Rusti hopes to resurrect it in a new location in Harlem one day.

She named the home “Brandon House” after her son, now 12. Because he was born after she was diagnosed, “it’s about beating the odds,” Rusti says. Her son, along with Rusti’s husband of 10 years, is a happy consequence of her new, post-prison, drug-free life.

“That saying of ‘once an addict, always an addict’ doesn’t always apply,” Rusti insists. “People do return to their full selves. We have something to contribute.”

Rusti’s first foray into advocacy came after she was diagnosed, when she went in search of information and ended up a member of the Ryan White HIV Planning Council of New York City. In prison, she was certified as an HIV counselor. Upon her release, she began volunteer work, convinced that she needed to do something to battle the high recidivism rates of drug abusers. Later, she served as co-chair of the HIV Advisory committee for people living with AIDS.

Her vision is to empower women and to create a safe space for them to do what she has done: re-enter society and build a healthy, constructive, drug-free life. Her approach worked particularly well with “ Lisa.” Rusti met the woman shortly after Lisa was released from prison. She was living in a halfway house, had just been diagnosed HIV positive, and had very little information about her condition. Rusti moved Lisa into an apartment, reunited her with her two daughters and helped her navigate the health-care system. In the 10 years since, Lisa has gone on to get her bachelor’s and master’s degrees and is “ready to move on with her life,” Rusti crows, sounding every bit the proud mentor and friend that she is.

In the years since Rusti set out on her own search for information about AIDS, she says support for HIV-positive women has improved. “But there still needs to be opportunities for women to identify services that have been created specifically for them,” she says.

Women who are drug abusers and the formerly incarcerated often have been victims of rape, incest or domestic violence, Rusti says. “We have issues that men don’t have.” Women living with HIV need different information than their male counterparts, information about testing for cervical cancer, breast cancer, diabetes. “The virus manifests itself differently in women than in men. For example, there is little information on HIV and menopause,” says Rusti, who is 46. “Before, women were only living a year or two after diagnosis. I’ve been living with the virus for 15 years.”

Rusti says the 2007 Advancing Women’s Leadership and Advocacy for AIDS Action workshop in Washington, D.C., will help her to work to educate and empower women and to reduce the infection rate on a national level. She said she plans to expand her involvement with international organizations and to partner with the National Minority AIDS Council (NMAC) in Washington. And as coordinator of a community ambassadors program, she plans to reach out to more women in New York.

“I don’t leave men out,” Rusti says. “But I focus on women because we are the backbones of our community.”

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Rusti participated in Advancing Women’s Leadership and Advocacy for AIDS Action, an initiative to equip and empower a cadre of women from around the world with the knowledge and skills to strengthen and lead the global response to AIDS.

You can read more about the initiative here.

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