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Positive Policy:Is the National HIV/AIDS Strategy Good for Black Americans? Part 1: Reducing HIV IncidenceBy Rod McCullom August 31, 2010 This is the first in a four-part series examining the strategy's impact on Black communities. This article is cross-posted from the Aug. 31 edition of Black AIDS Weekly, the newsletter of the Black AIDS Institute.
The Black Community at the ForefrontBlacks represent only about 12 percent of the nation's population but almost half of the more than 56,000 new infections each year. The strategy will "concentrate HIV-prevention efforts at the highest-risk populations," which includes Black Americans, men who have sex with men (MSM) and injection drug users (IDUs). It will also focus attention on the South and Northeast, the areas of the country with the highest HIV rates, and where Blacks are disproportionately located. "CDC will have better clarity of purpose toward reducing HIV infection within communities that are at the highest risk," says Kevin Fenton, M.D., Ph.D., director of the National Center for HIV/AIDS, Viral Hepatitis, STD, and TB Prevention at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), including more "interventions for the Black community." According to projections, by 2015 the strategy will reduce the annual number of HIV infections by 25 percent -- roughly half of which should theoretically occur among Blacks. "It's a tall order," says W. Jeffrey Campbell, prevention-development director at the Houston-based St. Hope Foundation, "particularly with the numbers going up the last two years among younger Black MSM. But we need higher goals like that to reach." In 2006 Black gay and bisexual men accounted for one-fifth of new infections nationwide. Yet some HIV/AIDS advocates have challenged the administration. New York City-based Housing Works calls the NHAS a step backward and asks, "Would President Obama suggest that we only clean up 25 percent of the Gulf oil spill?" Implementing Interventions That WorkEvidence-based interventions will play an integral role in the plan to reduce new HIV infections. This is a departure from the Bush administration's approach of promoting abstinence, which has proved ineffective. "It's a great starting point," says Dázon Dixon Diallo, the founder of Atlanta-based SisterLove, the first women's HIV/AIDS service organization in the Southeast. Dixon's organization has been lauded for its community-based risk-reduction strategy. "But I'm concerned it gives short shrift to women's health and reproductive-health issues. That could be very problematic, given the incidence of new cases among Black women."
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