Summit Looks for Ways to Curb District of Columbia's Spiraling HIV/AIDS Rates

On May 4 at the District of Columbia Black AIDS Leadership Mobilization Summit, participants discussed ways to respond to HIV/AIDS in Washington. About two months ago, the District's Department of Health reported that 3 percent of all D.C. residents were known to be living with HIV/AIDS. More than 4 percent of the District's black residents have HIV, including 6.5 percent of black men.

"If we look at either the 2007 surveillance report or the recently published Heterosexual Behavioral Study data, this tells an alarming story: We have two separate epidemics in D.C., one which is among gay men or men who have sex with men and one which is heterosexual and African-Americans," said A. Toni Young, executive director of the Washington-based Community Education Group. "This means we must develop two or more distinct strategies to address prevention, care, treatment, and research needs of these populations."

"The AIDS epidemic in Washington, D.C., is an unmitigated disaster and a national disgrace," said Phill Wilson, founder and CEO of the Los Angeles-based Black AIDS Institute. Just four cents per dollar in federal HIV/AIDS spending goes to prevention, according to BAI. "America urgently needs an AIDS stimulus to awaken it from its lethargic response to an epidemic that is spiraling out of control," Wilson said.

Congressional Black Caucus members Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) and Del. Donna M. Christensen (D-V.I.) pledged their support for a strategy to increase HIV testing, care and treatment utilization, condom use and other safe-sex practices, and to help de-stigmatize the disease.

"We must develop new and innovative strategies to get black churches involved in the fight," said Young. "All churches are not going to allow condoms but they can do something. Not all churches are going to allow testing but they can do something. We must ask them what is the something they can do and support them in doing it."

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