PRNewswire - December 1, 1999

"We have to take action," said Phill Wilson, director of the AAAPTI, himself an African-American living with HIV. "AIDS is no longer just knocking at our door. It's let itself in, raided the refrigerator and is upstairs sleeping in our bed. It's a leading killer of African-Americans in our prime working years. We are running out of time and we cannot wait for the government and others to come to the rescue. It is up to us to end this crisis and prevent another generation from being lost to this disease."

According to statistics from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, AIDS is now the leading cause of death for African-American men ages 25-44 and the second leading cause of death for African-American women in the same age group. In recent years, AIDS has fallen off the list of leading deadly diseases for white men and women.

"African-Americans bear the brunt of the US AIDS epidemic accounting for almost half of all new cases, far more than any other racial group," said Congresswoman Maxine Waters (D-CA). "Despite significant advances such as powerful combination therapies, African-Americans have fared worse than all other groups throughout the 20-year epidemic by every health-care measure. African-Americans are diagnosed later in the course of the disease, receive less care, benefit last from treatment advances, and die sooner."

Today's World AIDS Day Town Hall meeting was convened by Congresswoman Waters (D-CA) and Congressman Julian Dixon (D-CA). It was Congresswoman Waters who last year led the Congressional Black Caucus in asking Health and Human Services Secretary, Donna Shalala, to declare a state of emergency to help fight AIDS in African-American communities, resulting in $156 million additional federal dollars in FY 1999 to fund prevention, outreach and education.

Joining Congresswoman Waters and Congressman Dixon were actress Jennifer Lewis, NAACP Executive Director Kweisi Mfume and American Urban Radio Network president Jerry Lopes.

Developed through the leadership of the AAAPTI with support funding from HRSA, the California Health Care Foundation, Merck & Co., DuPont Pharmaceuticals, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Roxane Laboratories, Ortho Biotech and other corporate foundation and government partners, the NIA Plan will address key areas of AIDS prevention, treatment, and research.

There are six specific goals of the NIA Plan:

1. Provide specific answers to the question: "What can my community-based organization do to stop AIDS from spreading in our community?"

2. Encourage African-American stakeholders to take action to help stop the spread of AIDS in their communities.

3. Identify the people most at risk for HIV based on their behavior.

4. Identify characteristics of effective AIDS prevention programs that can be replicated for African-American communities.

5. Identify barriers to treatment and care in African-American communities and present culturally appropriate remedies to these barriers.

6. Make recommendations to develop effective, comprehensive behavioral and clinical research strategies.

The NIA Plan brings together virtually every segment of African-American communities in the fight against AIDS, including civil rights groups, faith communities, fraternal organizations, government agencies, media, and professional and community-based organizations. It is the first such effort to define specific goals and provide recommendations that each community stakeholder-whether an individual or organization-can follow in their efforts to fight the AIDS crisis.

Wilson says African-Americans have been slow to respond to the epidemic largely because of the prevailing misperception that AIDS is a gay, white male disease. The NIA Plan seeks to engage religious, civil rights, political and other African-American leaders, and encourage them to place AIDS at the top of their agendas.

"As African-Americans, we look to our churches, our civil rights organizations, and our social groups for leadership and information," Wilson said. "We need to get them all talking about this disease as part of everything they do. It must become part of our daily dialogue at every civil rights rally, every church supper and every trip to the beauty shop. Only then can we truly confront and arrest this disease that is destroying our community."

The African-American AIDS Policy and Training Institute (AAAPTI) is a non-profit educational organization. It conducts a broad variety of programs designed to reduce the number of new HIV infections in African-American communities, increase access to treatment and care resources and improve the quality-of-life for African-Americans living with HIV/AIDS. It is affiliated with the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, Calif. For more information on the NIA plan or the AAAPTI, please visit http://www.AAAInstitute.org.

SOURCE The African-American AIDS Policy and Training Institute

CONTACT: Andria Pilo of InterScience, 212-468-3771, for The African- American AIDS Policy and Training Institute/

Web Site: http://www.AAAInstitute.org/
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