Miami Herald - September 18, 2008
Erika Beras, eberas@MiamiHerald.com

-- Univision and a national healthcare foundation are partnering to raise awareness of HIV/AIDS in the Hispanic community.

Damaries Cruz was 20 years old when she was diagnosed with HIV/AIDS. Doctors told her she had a year to live. But 17 years later, she is living with the illness and working as a health educator for the Miami-Dade Health Department.

Cruz and her mother, Milagros Pagan, 77, are among several Hispanics featured in a nationwide ad campaign by Univision and the Kaiser Family Foundation to raise public awareness about HIV/AIDS in the Hispanic community. The ads will contain personal stories of Hispanics with the illness and those who love them.

The ads will be unveiled Thursday during the opening session of the 2008 U.S. Conference on AIDS in Fort Lauderdale.

The public service announcements will be broadcast beginning Oct. 15 on television and radio stations nationwide.

'I'm just hoping someone can look at me and say, 'Wow, she doesn't even look like she has HIV,' " Cruz said. "And then, they'll see, if it can happen to me, it can happen to them."

One of six people living with HIV in the United States is Hispanic, according to conference organizers, who say the subject remains a taboo among the nation's largest minority group.

In South Florida, the situation is more dire. The metro areas of Miami and Fort Lauderdale have the nation's highest percentage of people living with HIV/AIDS, according to CARE Resource, a nonprofit service organization.

"This silence allows stigma, misperceptions and fear to fuel an epidemic that claims the lives of Latinos at four times the rate of the general U.S. population," conference organizers said in a statement.

Pagan, 77, who does not have AIDS, said dealing with her daughter's condition in 1992 was especially difficult because -- at the time -- of the stigma and the lack of information readily available in the family's native Puerto Rico.

"I feel good about being in these ads," she said. "If it will help her and others who may be in her situation or in the situation I was in."

Univisión, one of the nation's major Spanish-language media companies, has been partnering with the nonprofit Kaiser Family Foundation since 2001 to spread the word about HIV/AIDS within the Hispanic community with its ¡Entérate del VIH y SIDA! (Get the Facts about HIV and AIDS!) campaign.

This year's conference theme is "Looking Back, Moving Forward" and is expected to draw more than 4,000 government officials, healthcare professionals and those with HIV/AIDS.

Sponsored by the National Minority AIDS Council, the conference will focus mainly on the impact of HIV/AIDS on minority communities.

The conference will be held at the Broward County Convention Center.

To learn more about HIV/AIDS and the advertising campaign, go to www.univision.com and type "SIDA" into the website's search engine. You can also call a toll-free hot line, 866-TU-SALUD.

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