AIDS Action Committee’s Blog

            In the online editon of The New York Times, their “Patient Voices” series continues with a look at eight men and women who share their experiences living with AIDS. 

Thought-provoking and unflinchingly honest, the piece opens with the story of Robin Grinstead from Swansea S.C. who shares her small town stories, including the fact that she has not attended her church since her diagnosis was revealed by gossiping friend in March. 

Other profiles include seven other powerful reflections of what it is like to live with AIDS today. 

(You will need sound capabilities on your computer for this feature)

October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month and like HIV Infection, breast cancer affects African American women’s health outcomes differently than white women’s health outcomes.

Across the board of health concerns, women of color face a greater likelihood of poorer health outcomes than white women.  Recently, there has been more attention paid to understanding the reasons behind racial and ethnic differences in health status and access to care. Which is about time, since “poorer” health outcomes often mean some people are dying from an illness in far greater numbers than others.  For example, rates of HIV infection in members of communities of color are grossly disproportionate to their representation in the general population and this disproportion is greater among women of color. While approximately half of the men recently diagnosed with HIV are non-white, 83% of women recently diagnosed with HIV are women of color in Massachusetts.  [Download An Added Burden: The Impact of the HIV/AIDS Epidemic on Communities of Color in Massachusetts.]  These disproportionate levels are also evident in rates of death among women of color such that HIV infection has become the leading cause of death for black women ages 25-34 years nationwide.  This disparity of health outcomes for women of color does not rest with HIV infection alone.

Like HIV infection, all women are at risk for breast cancer, yet African American women with breast cancer are less likely than white women to survive 5 years post diagnosis.  [Download Breast Cancer Facts & Figures, 2007-2008.]  The American Cancer Society estimates that in 2008, 182,460 women in the U.S. will be diagnosed with invasive breast cancer. Next to lung cancer, breast cancer is the second leading cause of cancer death in women, with estimates that 40,480 women will die from this disease this year.  Incidence and death rates from breast cancer are lower among women of other racial and ethnic groups than among white and African American women.  Despite higher incidence rates of breast cancer in white women, breast cancer death rates are lower among white women than among African American women.
There is current research to suggest why there are such negative health outcomes for African American women, but the bottom line is, like HIV infection, women of color are coming into care late and their health outcomes are significantly different than other women.

More: Read about an AIDS Action employee’s personal struggle with breast cancer.

On the eve of the International AIDS Conference being held next week in Mexico City, President Bush signed into law the much anticipated PEPFAR Reauthorization Bill. The bill calls for a $50 billion U.S. commitment to fight HIV/AIDS across the globe. Although disappointingly the bill still promotes abstinence-only prevention programs, encouragingly the bill includes language that will help ease HIV/AIDS based travel restrictions in the U.S. This is a laudable, major piece of legislation that will undoubtedly save many lives.

Many pundits are saying PEPFAR could be the cornerstone of the President’s foreign policy legacy. That may well be true. President Bush at the signing said “HIV/AIDS is still one of the world’s greatest humanitarian challenges, no question about it. But it is a challenge we’re meeting” (Dunham, Reuters, 7/30). Oh really? An interesting statement considering it was made in the White House, a building that literally sits just blocks away from the “belly of the beast”.

In the predominantly Black District of Columbia, 1 out of every 20 people (1/5 of the population) is HIV+. That is a incidence rate as high as some of the hardest hit locations in sub-Saharan Africa. The Black AIDS Institute this week released a report titled Left Behind: Black America: A Neglected Priority in the Global AIDS Epidemic. It reflects that while America’s response to the global epidemic is record breaking, funds to fight the domestic epidemic have remained static. Left Behind also states:

• Despite improvements in treatment, AIDS remains the leading cause of death for Black women aged 25-34 and the second leading cause for Black men aged 35-44.
• Black women are 23 times more likely than white women to have an AIDS diagnosis.
• Black gay men have more than twice the rate of infection than their white counterparts.

Left Behind points out that this administration has taken an obliviously neglectful and flawed approach to the domestic epidemic. New prevention paradigms must be developed. Campaigns with targeted messages that are not one size fits all and take into account all of the subsets that make up Black America need to be implemented. A national AIDS strategy to end the epidemic in this country is a must.

We as advocates must mobilize the community and stand as one, to fight this plague destroying our community, because one other thing that Left Behind shows us is that this administration is telling Black America to “kiss its behind” when it come to HIV/AIDS.

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