PRNewswire - November 20, 2003

Three North Carolina HIV/AIDS organizations received initial grants of nearly $130,000 from the Pfizer Foundation Southern HIV/AIDS Prevention Initiative. The grants are part of the $3 million, three-year Initiative to fund highly targeted prevention programs to underserved populations in Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas.

Grants awarded during this funding cycle totaled more than $1 million with ongoing technical assistance from the Foundation.

Although African Americans account for just 23% of the population in North Carolina, they made up 72% of new AIDS cases reported between July of 2001 and June of 2002. At the end of 2001, there were an estimated 5,402 people living with AIDS in North Carolina.

"By partnering with organizations in small towns and big cities across the South, we hope to help slow the increasing incidence of HIV/AIDS," said Caroline Roan, secretary of the Pfizer Foundation. "We know that tackling HIV/AIDS -- the most catastrophic health challenge of our time -- demands that we work and partner together as governments and communities, and as corporations and foundations," Roan added.

"The hub of our prevention work is in Siler City, a gritty town of strip malls and factories," said Holly Baddour, executive director of the Chatham Social Health Council in Pittsboro, NC. It's also home to escalating rates of HIV/AIDS among African Americans and Latinos.

"We've found that the best way to reach African Americans and Latinos is through fairly non-traditional approaches" including taking prevention messages and services to churches, barbershops and Latino grocery stores, said Baddour who has found support from many in the religious community.

The Foundation's new grantees in North Carolina are operating an array of creative programs taking prevention and education messages to the community. Grants were awarded to the following organizations:

* The Community Based Learning Alternatives Center ($37,000 - Smithfield, NC): Let's Talk About It, a life skills prevention project is using theater and the performing arts to educate and train youth as peer educators.

* AIDS Care Services ($42,000 - Winston-Salem, NC): The organization is expanding its Latino Outreach Program to include training lay health advisors to support HIV-positive Latinos seeking medical and social services.

* Chatham Social Health Council ($50,000 - Pittsboro, NC): Clergy, congregations, Latino grocery stores, barber shops and beauty salons will serve as conduits for providing a variety of prevention services and training on STD and HIV testing and treatment to African Americans and to Latinos.

"The face of HIV/AIDS is changing in North Carolina. The disease has invaded the South and we must respond," said Congressman Bob Etheridge (D-2nd District). "I am greatly encouraged by the wonderful work that prevention programs, like the three in my District awarded Pfizer Foundation grants, are doing to educate the community."

Since 2001, 46 percent of the estimated new HIV/AIDS cases in the U.S. have been reported in the South. While the southern region accounts for little more than one-third of the total population, it is where 40 percent of the people estimated to be living with the AIDS call home.

The Pfizer Foundation, established by Pfizer Inc, has worked for a half a century, in partnership with community-based organizations to ensure access to quality healthcare for those individuals most in need.

SOURCE The Pfizer Foundation

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