Leaders of the National Minority AIDS Council will take their campaign to Capitol Hill today to gain support for new strategies in combating the AIDS epidemic.
 
As the international community observes World AIDS Day on Dec. 1, NMAC will host a reception for Congressional leaders and present a study with five key recommendations to decrease the health disparities among blacks with HIV/AIDS.
 
“We must have a systematic approach to addressing the epidemic,” Damon Dozier, NMAC's director of government relations and public policy, told BlackAmericaWeb.com. So many of the problems in society and in the black community are connected in some ways to the disparities among those with AIDS/HIV, he said.

“If you find poverty, you find HIV/AIDS. If you have lack of access to medical care, you find HIV/AIDS. If you have problems with substandard housing, you find HIV/AIDS,” said Dozier.
 
Congressional help and support, as well as the backing of leaders on the local and state level, is needed to address the recommendations in the report by Columbia University professor Robert Fullilove, according to Dozier.
 
Those recommendations are:

• Eliminate the marginalization of, and stigma and discrimination against black gay and other men who have sex with men.
• Reduce the impact of incarceration as driver of new HIV infections.
• Reduce the role of injection drug use in sustaining the AIDS epidemic.
• Expand proven HIV prevention, diagnosis and care programs.
• Stabilize communities by increasing affordable housing.

Since the beginning of the HIV/AIDS epidemic 25 years ago, blacks have been over represented among those living and dying with AIDS, according to NMAC. The disease continues to affect blacks more than any other racial or ethnic group in the United States.
 
While blacks account for only 13 percent of the U.S. population, they account for more than half of all new HIV/AIDS cases. More than 200,000 blacks have died with AIDS, and at least a half of those living now with HIV are black.
 
“AIDS is a black disease, but people don’t want to accept that fact,” Phill Wilson, executive director of the Black AIDS Institute, told BlackAmericaWeb.com. “The silence is killing us.”
 
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, blacks who test positive for HIV are seven times more likely to die from it than whites.
 
Black people represent more than 600,000 of the 1.1 million living with AIDS. “As black America goes, so goes America,” Wilson said.
 
Too often HIV/AIDS is viewed as a disease that mainly impacts heterosexual women, but that’s not correct, says Jasmyne Cannick, a California based columnist and activist.
 
“At the end of the day, we see that it is African-American heterosexual women and African-American men who are gay or bisexual who are impacted by the disease,” Cannick told BlackAmericaWeb.com.
 
In the black gay community, the disease is kept quiet by some who are infected because they fear others will not want to associate with them, said Harmonica Sunbeam, a comedian and female impersonator who is living with AIDS.
 
“I think in the gay community they just don’t want to know. They would rather deal with the unknown and face consequences later instead of going ahead and addressing it before it happens,” Sunbeam told BlackAmericaWeb.com.
 
She has lived with the disease several years and works to educate others about prevention.
 
HIV/AIDS activists have picked up key support in recent months throughout the black community, with leaders such as Rev. Jesse Jackson, Sen. Barack Obama, Julian Bond and the Rev. T.D. Jakes renewing their commitment to help fight the disease and raise community awareness.
 
Now that support needs to catch on among all U.S. leaders, they say.
 
“This war is not in Iraq, it’s right here,” Cannick said. “We are talking about a fight for our lives.”
 
Wilson said his organization will continue to work with others to gain support for initiatives addressing AIDS in the black community.
 
"We have a new Congress, and we have a responsibility to communicate to them what our priorities should be," Wilson said. Funding for AIDS/HIV programs, research and care is "of critical importance to us."

“For too long, the domestic AIDS portfolio has been flat. At the same time, the number of HIV/AIDS cases continues to increase, and that means there are fewer dollars available and preventive efforts are hampered,” Wilson told BlackAmericaWeb.com. “We’ve been waiting over a year for reauthorization of the Ryan White Care Act,” which provides support for many with HIV/AIDS.
 
Fullilove, author of the NMAC’s report and the five recommendations, said it’s time to move beyond asking each year why statistics consistently show an increase in HIV/AIDS cases in the black community.

“Our analysis identifies the forces that drive the epidemic in black America," said Fullilove, "and recommends proven, practical and affordable strategies that government must implement without delay to protect the health of African-Americans."