After being boiled down to three basic strategies — abstain from sex, wear a condom and avoid sharing needles — HIV prevention in America is in urgent need of an expanded approach, according to a nationwide coalition of AIDS organizations known as the Prevention Justice Mobilization.
Traditional HIV-prevention messages tend to focus on personal responsibility and reducing individual risk factors while ignoring broader issues like poverty, homophobia and homelessness that may increase a person’s risk no matter what steps they take to remain uninfected, said Kenyon Farrow, a spokesperson for the Prevention Justice Mobilization.
“There are also the sort of structural risk factors, so that sometimes it’s not about what you do, but who you are,” Farrow said.
More than 250 AIDS organizations across the country have endorsed the Prevention Justice Mobilization’s goals, and are using their World AIDS Day events to draw attention to everything from the unavailability of condoms in New York prisons, to the need for public funding of a needle-exchange program in Fulton County.
The Prevention Justice Mobilization’s activities culminate in a Dec. 4 march and rally in Atlanta, designed to inject new ideas into the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention’s National HIV Prevention Conference, which takes place Dec. 2-5 in Atlanta.
As part of the Prevention Justice Mobilization’s efforts, the group sent a Nov. 1 letter to CDC officials requesting that the “NGO Village” at the HIV Prevention Conference — where non-government and community-based organizations and vendors share information and raise awareness about their efforts — be opened to people who aren’t registered for the prevention conference.
“Many of the people in the Atlanta area that have been hit so hard by this epidemic are small organizations that don’t have the resources to attend the conference itself,” said local AIDS activist Jeff Graham, a member of the Georgia Prevention Justice Alliance, which is a partner with the Prevention Justice Mobilization.
The cost to attend the CDC conference is $450. The CDC is “currently considering this request” to open the NGO Village to the public, said Jennifer Ruth, a CDC spokesperson who added that the agency “strongly agrees with efforts to increase access to prevention for at-risk populations in the U.S.”
“However, it is also our understanding that [the Prevention Justice Mobilization’s] agenda addresses a broad range of issues related to increasing access to prevention, and the scope of their interest goes beyond CDC’s efforts,” Ruth said.
Attended by researchers and public health workers from across the country, the National HIV Prevention Conference includes sessions on the impact of HIV on communities of color, including black gay men. Black gay men are the group hardest hit by HIV in the U.S., and a prime example of how social factors, not only behavior, increase a person’s risk, Farrow said.
“If you look at gay men, and all the data that looks at risk factors … you see that black men don’t practice any more risky behavior than white men, or don’t have more sex partners, but have a lot more HIV and risk of HIV,” Farrow said. “There’s very little research about black gay men and their risk factors. We’re sort of trying things out in a community that we don’t have a lot of research for.”
Whether it’s a lack of access to health care, or being forced to exchange sex for money, food or housing, many people find themselves in situations that current HIV-prevention simply doesn’t prepare them for, Graham said.
“All of those are very important issues to keep in mind as you try to prevent the spread of HIV,” said Graham, noting the increase in infections in Fulton County and across the country. “This really reverses a trend we’ve seen over a decade where HIV infections were stable, but now they’re back on the rise.”
Graham, along with the Georgia Prevention Justice Mobilization, will speak in favor of public funding for a needle-exchange program at the Dec. 5 meeting of the Fulton County Commission.
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jdavids13 on 11/11/074:03 PM:
Thank you for this story. The Unity March will be held on Tuesday, December 4, gathering across the street from the Hyatt Hotel (corner of Baker St and Peach Tree St. NE) at the Hearty Ivy Park
