It was 30 years ago, during the worst part of the
HIV/AIDS epidemic, when the Sweet Emergency Fund
came into being.
"We were working with a lot of very sick and dying
people, and we didn't have the resources we have now
in terms of case management and other things that built
up through the years," the fund's founder and namesake,
Donna Sweet, M.D., recalled. "We were desperately
short of funds for paying for things back in the day."
The needs ranged from prescription drugs to a house
for patients "with nowhere else to go." The idea
of a fundraiser sprang up, and Sweet — a professor of
internal medicine at KU School of Medicine-Wichita
— volunteered to host. It's been in her backyard
every year since then.
Sweet became known as "the AIDS doctor," though
not because of the fundraiser. A former farm girl and
the first member of her family to attend college, she
first became interested in the disease because of her
work in immunology and microbiology, her profession
before she graduated from KU School of Medicine; her
late husband was a Ph.D. immunologist. Since joining the
KU faculty in 1982, Sweet has led the treatment
of HIV/AIDS in much of Kansas while advocating for
anything that can help prevent its spread.
7
Access to care
