|
|
September 2005 NORA Discusses HIV among African American Men Who Have Sex with Men and the Campaign to End AIDS On Monday, September 12, the National Organizations Responding to AIDS (NORA) coalition, for which AIDS Action serves as the convener, held its bimonthly meeting at the American Public Health Association. The featured speakers for the meeting were Leo Rennie, HIV policy consultant, and Naomi Long, national coordinator for the Campaign to End AIDS. Mr. Leo Rennie spoke with NORA attendees about the community’s mobilization efforts in response to data that was released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in June 2005. This data revealed an HIV prevalence of 46 percent among African American men who have sex with men.. Moreover, among these men, 67 percent were unaware of their HIV infection. The study, conducted as part of the CDC’s National HIV Behavioral Surveillance System, presents data collected over 2004 in Baltimore, Los Angeles, Miami, New York City, and San Francisco. Mr. Rennie pointed out that although the results of the study are “off the charts,” high HIV prevalence rates among this population have been documented for years. This continued trend, coupled with an insufficient government and community response to it, led Mr. Rennie and his colleagues to form the Black Gay Men’s (BGM) Strategy Group in order to organize a response to this escalating public health crisis. Mr. Rennie shared with NORA members a document called BGM Strategy Group Recommendations to Address HIV Infection Rates Among Black MSM. True to its title, the document makes recommendations to the federal government on how to respond to the high infection rates among Black men who have sex with men (see the Weekly Update July 29, 2005, “African American Men’s Health Briefing on HIV/AIDS” for the list of recommendations, available here). Explaining the need for such recommendations, the authors of the document wrote, “Neither CDC, HHS, nor the Administration has met recently with representatives of this highly impacted population.” Mr. Rennie called on national HIV organizations to address this issue more directly. Continuing, he explained that national organizations will be key players in strategizing how to “integrate the information into broader conversations” which address public policy. Mr. Rennie offered that the future CDC studies will look at other populations, such as Latino men and women and African American women, and he believes the findings will be similar. He stressed that a response is needed now for Black MSM, adding that, as data from the CDC studies becomes available, the response should then be modified for the populations he had noted. In closing, Mr. Rennie urged “anyone doing HIV
work” to incorporate the CDC’s findings into their efforts. As
far as how this can be done, he frankly admitted that he does
not have a comprehensive answer to the question. He stated, however,
that stakeholders must begin talking about how to effectively
incorporate new CDC data. Ms. Long explained that C2EA is a national effort to bring people living with HIV and their allies from across the country to Washington, D.C. to engage in HIV activism, advocating for the C2EA platform. Participants will also lobby their Members of Congress. People across the country will begin traveling to Washington in caravans in early October and, along the way, they will participate in various community HIV-awareness events and speak to the press about the C2EA platform. Among the community events already planned, Ms. Long said, are a country music festival in Vermont; a fashion show in Washington, DC; and an “AIDS-walk-type event” in Michigan. According to Ms. Long, travels will culminate in Washington, DC on November 5, 2005. In closing, Ms. Long revealed that the Campaign’s D.C. activities were originally scheduled to take place four weeks earlier; however, organizers decided to reschedule them after Katrina hit so that participants who had been affected by the hurricane would have more time to organize. To read more about the CDC study referenced in this article, link to: http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5424a2.htm and http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5424a3.htm. For more information on C2EA, including the campaign’s platform, further information on the change of dates, how organizations can endorse the Campaign and how individuals can get involved, visit http://www.c2ea.org. |
