SAN FRANCISCO (AP) – An advertising campaign featuring cartoon characters shaped like male genitalia encouraged more men to get tested for syphilis in San Francisco, according to a new study.

In the neighborhoods where the Health Penis ads ran on billboards and bus shelters, men who saw the comic strips were most likely to have been tested for the sexually transmitted disease, according to researchers from the city’s Department of Public Health.

The health department sponsored the humorously risqué ads between 2002 and 2005 to combat rising syphilis rates among gay and bisexual men.

Between 40 and 60 percent of survey respondents who were aware of the ads said they had been tested in the previous six months, department researchers reported Dec. 26 in the online journal Public Library of Science Medicine.

Although the campaign was not without controversy – an outdoor advertising company initially refused to post the spots – infection rates have since declined, officials said.

“We took a risk, and that risk paid off,” said Jacqueline McCright, an STD services manager with the health department.

The campaign’s success has inspired Seattle, Philadelphia, Los Angeles and Palm Springs to use similar ads.

SANTA CRUZ (AP) – A gay student prevented from donating blood because of his sexual history has stirred debate among Santa Cruz school officials about whether to continue hosting campus blood drives.

Ronnie Childers, 17, student body president at Harbor High School, said he volunteered at a blood drive at his school last month for five hours and waited in line for three more before being turned away.

“I was turned away because of my sexual contacts,” Childers said. “The reasoning behind me not being able to give blood is ridiculous…. It made me feel like an outcast.”

According to U.S. Food and Drug Administration regulations, a man who has had a sexual encounter with another man since 1977 is ineligible to donate.

Santa Cruz city schools officials said they were reconsidering whether to have blood drives on campus if students were required to divulge information about their sexual activities.

“As the blood supply has become so politicized over time, we need to check our policies,” Santa Cruz City Schools Trustee Cynthia Hawthorne said.

In March, the major blood-supply organizations in the U.S., including the American Red Cross, petitioned the FDA to relax the rules on gay men, saying “the current lifetime deferral for men who have had sex with other men is medically and scientifically unwarranted.”

The issue has not yet been resolved, the Red Cross said.

“Studies have shown that men with a history of male to male sex since 1977 may be infected with HIV and/or may have evidence of a lifestyle that potentially exposes them to HIV,” according to the FDA’s Web site.

An FDA spokesperson could not immediately be reached for comment.

HONOLULU (AP) – The Hawaii AIDS Clinical Trials Unit has obtained additional funding that will enable it to operate for another six months.

The National Institutes of Health has agreed to provide $640,000 in bridge funding. The clinic’s staff is seeking additional financial help from state lawmakers to let it stay open beyond the six-month period.

“We’re keeping our spirits up here,” said program director Dr. Cecilia Shikuma. “We’re confident that with the layers of support we’ve been receiving we will not shut down.”

That money, combined with leftover money from this year, should be enough to allow the clinic to stay open for at least a half-year, Shikuma said.

The unit was told by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in November that it would lose about $1.6 million in funding. The agency said it was cutting off funds as it shut down about a dozen units involved in pharmaceutical trials of HIV/AIDS drugs.

Shikuma said she has enlisted the support of Gov. Linda Lingle and Hawaii’s congressional delegation to lobby the NIAID to reconsider the funding withdrawal. The unit has not been formally notified in writing of the institute’s decision, she said.

The center, which operates within the University of Hawaii’s John A. Burns School of Medicine, conducts research and provides front-line care to hundreds of HIV/AIDS patients.

Shikuma and others have argued that the unit is the only research program in the state dedicated exclusively to HIV/AIDS and its experts have become an invaluable resource to physicians and patients.

Due to Hawaii’s geographic isolation, patients couldn’t easily participate in clinical studies elsewhere, she said.

TRENTON (AP) – More than two years after his stunning public declaration that he is gay and would resign, former Gov. James McGreevey took part on Jan. 2 in a private ceremony to unveil his portrait in his old Statehouse office.

The event brought McGreevey to the Statehouse for first time since he left office in November 2004, three years into his first term. He was joined by his parents, his partner, a former secretary and by Gov. Jon S. Corzine. Several of the current governor’s staffers also attended.

The timing and nature of the event had been complicated by the circumstances of McGreevey’s departure. The $25,000 painting has been in storage for more than a year, and a private ceremony was at one time planned to occur this summer.

McGreevey’s resignation, announced on national television during a speech best known for the line “I am a gay American,” came after he announced he had an affair with a staffer. The man, later identified as Golan Cipel, McGreevey’s homeland security adviser, has denied an affair took place and claims the governor sexually harassed him.

McGreevey’s portrait hangs among those of other former governors in Gov. Jon S. Corzine’s outer office. Portraits of former governors hang throughout the Statehouse; the pictures of more recent governors are displayed in the outer office.

McGreevey commissioned artist Chen Yanning to paint his official gubernatorial portrait and sat for the picture after leaving office. The painting was paid out of gubernatorial transition funds.

The delay with McGreevey’s portrait had also delayed the hanging of the portrait of his successor, Gov. Richard J. Codey.

COLUMBUS (AP) – Gov.-elect Ted Strickland named two new cabinet officers Dec. 28, including the state’s first openly gay agency director.

The appointment of Columbus City Councilmember Mary Jo Hudson as insurance director follows a 2004 election in which religious conservatives in the state successfully advanced an anti-same-sex marriage ballot initiative that helped bring out the voters that swung the state for President Bush.

Gay-rights group Equality Ohio lauded the appointment.

“Gov.-elect Strickland made a promise to voters to appoint a cabinet that looks like all of Ohio,” executive director Lynne Bowman said in a statement. “Today, he has taken an historic step in recognizing the contributions and qualifications of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Ohioans.”

On City Council, Hudson chairs the Jobs and Economic Development Committee. She is an attorney at Bailey Cavalieri.

From 1989 to 1996, Hudson was a deputy liquidator and special services attorney for the Ohio Department of Insurance and Office of the Ohio Insurance Liquidator.

“This is the first concrete demonstration that the tone in the Statehouse has already begun to change,” Bo Shuff, Equality Ohio’s education and policy director, said in the statement. “We now know for certain that the conversation about issues that matter to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Ohioans can take place.”

CHATTANOOGA (AP) – In the 25 years since the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) identified AIDS, misconceptions still surround the disease in Tennessee.

“AIDS goes home with businessmen to their wives; wives bring it home to their husbands,” said Sister Adamarie Kost, director of The Home Place, a Chattanooga residence for people with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. “It’s not a gay disease anymore.”

Many people still associate HIV and AIDS with gay white men, but in Hamilton County last year, 51 percent of all reported cases of HIV were among African-Americans, said county health department AIDS outreach coordinator Tom Rucci. Increasingly, AIDS sufferers also include Hispanics, women and children.

In 1988, when Rucci began working for the department, Hamilton County had only about 40 cases of HIV/AIDS.

“The combined number of cases now is roughly 1,200,” he said, and the number is increasing.

Rucci thinks the increase could be due to a misconception about the drugs used to treat HIV. A combination of medicines knows as the “AIDS cocktail” has helped people with HIV live longer, healthier lives, but is not a cure, Rucci said.

“We’re seeing people who think there’s a cure for AIDS going back to old risky behaviors,” he said. “The drugs … don’t keep you from infecting others.”

Misconceptions about how someone can be infected with HIV persist as well.

Sheila Humphries is a client liaison for HIV/AIDS support organization Channels of Love, which sends speakers to schools.

“[Students] still think you can get HIV from mosquitoes or from sitting on a toilet seat,” she said.