Washington Blade - March 16, 2007
Ryan Lee

"AIDS among African Americans is in fact a crisis, and it is not a new one," Kevin Fenton, director of the CDC's National Center for HIV, STD & TB Prevention, said at a March 8 gathering.

The community mobilization meeting - which brought together black entertainers, church leaders, gay activists and researchers - was held in conjunction with the CDC releasing updated HIV/AIDS data that added to the bleakness of the epidemic among black America.

From 2001 to 2005, African Americans accounted for 51 percent of all new HIV diagnoses, according to data published in the CDC's Morbidity & Mortality Weekly Report. Men having sex with men accounted for 52 percent of HIV diagnoses among all black men, more than all other transmission modes combined, according to the CDC's report.

Blacks are also the group most impacted by HIV/AIDS in southern states, making up 54.3 percent of HIV diagnoses from 2001-2005, according to the report.

"Clearly, HIV/AIDS remains a persistent and pervasive threat to the health and well-being of far too many African Americans," said Fenton, who is gay. "The magnitude of the epidemic requires a heightened national response to fight HIV - in every corner of our communities, in every sector, by every one of us."

The CDC's new game plan to fighting HIV/AIDS in blacks concedes that "although there have been signs of success in many areas [of preventing the spread of HIV among blacks], progress has not accelerated at the desired rate."

The CDC strategy focuses on making prevention information and services more widely available and culturally resonant; mainstreaming and increasing HIV testing among blacks; creating more organic, effective prevention strategies; and mobilizing parts of black America that have long ignored the unrelenting epidemic.

It is encouraging to see the CDC finally bringing various segments of black America to the planning table, but its latest initiative still fails to address "the structural nature of the epidemic," said Robert Fullilove, a researcher at Columbia University.

In November, Fullilove authored a widely supported assessment of the HIV crisis among black Americans that stressed the need to tackle everything from the prison rate, to unstable housing, to homophobia in HIV prevention strategies targeting blacks.

Fullilove and other HIV/AIDS activists also criticized the CDC for not calling more attention to the plight of black gay and bisexual men at its March 8 community mobilization event, since that is one of the groups most impacted by HIV/AIDS in America.

"I think what [black gay and bisexual men] need is something concrete in the way of support," Fullilove said. "The data shows how stressed that community is, and obviously folk who are working in those programs [targeting black gay men] need to be supported."

Black gay men are at the apex of African Americans at risk for HIV/AIDS, according to CDC data. Black women are 20 times more likely to be diagnosed with HIV than white women and black men are twice as likely to become HIV-positive as black women. Of the 58,287 black men diagnosed with HIV between 2001-2005, 30,154 were gay and bisexual, according to the report.

Much of the CDC mobilization calls on blacks to ramp up the fight against HIV/AIDS, while leaving unclear whether the CDC will increase its support, said Fullilove, who noted that the CDC itself has been fighting an ever-growing disease with an ever-steady budget.

"[The federal government] can't have level funding if you're adding 40- to 60,000 new cases a year," Fullilove said. "We've left it to our community to come up with the wherewithal to fight a fight that to a certain extent should be taken care of by our tax dollars."

The Human Rights Campaign blasted the Bush administration for flat-funding the Ryan White Care Act and the CDC, while adding $28 million to the federal budget for more abstinence-until-marriage prevention programs.

"Throwing more money at unproven abstinence programs while HIV/AIDS rates among black gay and bisexual men grow is unacceptable," HRC President Joe Solmonese said in a prepared statement.

Fullilove empathizes with gay groups calling for more attention and funding from the federal government.

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