Commentary Bringing It Back Home: Making Gender Central in the Domestic U.S. AIDS Response Anna Forbes, MSS a, * , Mary Bowers, MSW b , Aleisha Langhorne, MPH, MHSA b , Vera Yakovchenko, MPH c , Shelby Taylor, MPH Candidate b a Independent Consultant, Kensington, Maryland b Office on Women’s Health, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Washington, DC c Office of HIV/AIDS Policy, Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Washington, DC Article history: Received 1 March 2011; Accepted 2 May 2011 Introduction In partnership with UNAIDS, the U.S. Office on Women’s Health convened a 2-day meeting entitled “Bringing Gender Home: Implementing Gender Responsive HIV/AIDS Program- ming for US Women and Girls” on June 9 and 10, 2010 in Washington, DC. The meeting’s purpose statement said that the U.S. Office on Women’s Health Gender Forum would “promote increased leadership in gender-responsive programming for women and girls.” Ideologies of femininity and gender norms that require women/girls to be passive and naïve about sex limit their ability to seek sexual health and HIV prevention information and when informed, to be proactive about reducing their risk for HIV infection. (Gupta, 2000; Interagency Coalition on AIDS and Development, 2006; UNAIDS & KIT, 2005). Fortunately, dominant ideologies regarding femininity and masculinity do and can be changed and are therefore amenable to HIV interventions that seek to change them and promote more equitable gender relationships and safer sex. (UNAIDS & KIT, 2005; World Health Organization, 2003). The forum was designed not only to profile the need for gender-sensitive approaches to HIV prevention, care and treat- ment in the United States, but also to inspire participants to bring that message in very specific terms to U.S. health care providers, policy makers, and governmental and nongovernmental orga- nizations. The 200 researchers, community-based service providers, government officials, and advocates present shared examples of effective gender-responsive programming that have evolved over the last decade and are being implemented primarily abroad. Participants’ enthusiasm regarding these developments sharpened their expressed determination to see expanded attention to gender in the national HIV/AIDS response in the coming decade. Bloom and Covington (2001) defined gender-responsive programming as “creating an environment . . . that reflects an understanding of the realities of women’s lives and addresses the issues of the participants.” To be gender-responsive, HIV programming must specifically recognize and respond to the economic, psychosocial, and cultural circumstances that shape women’s and girl’s lives, their HIV risk, and their access (or lack thereof) to services. The forum started with a wide range of plenary presentations that reviewed our common understanding of the gendered impacts of the HIV epidemic in the United States and the prevention challenges we face. Then, international gender experts presented lessons learned and approaches that have been developed for use in the President’s Emergency Fund for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (GFATM), and other programs supported by the United States since 2004. A new evidence base is forming in countries receiving these funds as they develop their own gender-responsive approaches to serving women and girls. The need for such programming has been more apparent in these countries, given that, in most of them, the majority of new HIV infections are already occurring among women and girls. This growing evidence base offers important lessons to U.S. service providers and policy makers as we confront increasing domestic rates of HIV infection among women and girls. These internationally developed models of gender-responsive programming created with PEPFAR and/or GFATM funding contain approaches and ideas that can be usefully adapted for the United States. Capitalizing on the opportunity to adapt and apply these innovations at home has the potential not only to The views expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. * Correspondence to: Ms. Anna Forbes, 3017 Fayette Road, Kensington, MD 20895, USA. E-mail address: annaforbes@earthlink.net (A. Forbes). www.whijournal.com 1049-3867/$ - see front matter Published by Elsevier Inc. doi:10.1016/j.whi.2011.05.001 Women's Health Issues 21-6S (2011) S221–S226