STD Prevention Online does an excellent job of highlighting current issues and updates. If you have not seen it yet, check out their website! It's really well done. 

http://www.stdpreventiononline.org/index.php/

In Honor of National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day tomorrow, we thought we share this awesome piece from the National Minority AIDS Council. Feel Free to check their website out for more information on their organization and all the amazing things they do: http://www.nmac.org/.       The infographic below shows the stark reality of HIV in Black America. The statistics are mind numbing. At current rates of infection, 50% of black gay men will have HIV by the time they are 35 (8% of white gay men are infected). I’ve been accused of caring more for the black community then I do for my own people. I love being Asian and I will always be concerned about my community, but the numbers don’t lie. As an Asian gay man, I am fighting for black gay men because it’s the right thing to do. I am fighting for black gay men because like the civil rights movement, it’s going to take a rainbow of people fighting together to make a difference. February 7 is National Black AIDS/HIV Awareness Day. We come together to once again draw attention to HIV’s devastation of America’s black community. How many more awareness days do we need in order to understand that we’ve failed black gay men? Nowhere in the world are there communities with a 50% infection rate. We have also failed African American women when they are 20 times more likely to be HIV infected then white women. In the fight against HIV over the last 30 plus years, the statistics for the black community were always known. The social determinants of health are often sited as the reason for the big difference. According to the CDC, "The social determinants of health are the circumstances in which people are born, grow up, live, work, and age, as well as the systems put in place to deal with illness. These circumstances are in turn shaped by a wider set of forces: economics, social policies, and politics.” America has poor people of all ethnicities, so why aren’t the rates of poverty equivalent by race? The color of your skin should not determine your health outcome, yet all the indicators reveal the opposite. The HIV community cannot solve all the world’s challenges, so what is our responsibility? A recent Lancet article notes, “33 percent of HIV-positive black MSM were retained in care, compared with 51 percent of white MSM; and only 16 percent of black MSM were virally suppressed, compared with 34 percent of white MSM. If black MSM achieved the same degree of HIV care as white MSM, the racial gap in new infection rates would be reduced by 27 percent. If black MSM with HIV had 95 percent diagnosis, or 95 percent retention in care, or both, the reduction would be 27 percent, 25 percent, and 59 percent, respectively.” In other words, if we’re able to retain HIV positive African Americans in care, we can significantly move the curve. It’s not enough to link people to care, all PLWH need to be retained in care. NMAC challenges health departments and community based organizations to move quickly and aggressively to link/retain all PLWH into care. Since it’s not enough just to link into care, we need implementation research to understand how to retain PLWH in care. AIDS United published an interesting study on the use of smartphone apps to support PLWH in care. A panel from the International Association of Physicians in AIDS Care has 5 recommendations on how to retain PLWH into care. NMAC thinks it may be time to look at incentive programs for either the PLWH or healthcare providers. NMAC challenges the Centers for Disease Control, health departments, and community to re-examine the use of data. There is too much lag time between collecting the data and reporting on it. As a result, decisions are being made using data sets that can be 4 years old. How helpful is it to make decisions in 2015 based on data from 2010? This year the White House will release an update on the National HIV/AIDS Strategy, yet the data from the report may have been collected years earlier. It’s very difficult to get a good picture of the epidemic if we don’t have good data. NMAC asks health departments to create advisory committees made up of people living with HIV, activists, community based organizations, elected officials, healthcare providers, civil rights attorneys, researchers, and others to discuss the use of data. Policies that were put in place at the beginning of the epidemic may no longer be relevant. Making good decisions depends on good data. Data should be the foundation to determine how to spend limited HIV resources. Viral suppression and when to begin treatment should be the PLWH’s decision with support from their healthcare provider. Health literacy for all people living with HIV is essential in order for individuals to make informed decisions. NMAC calls for impactful, culturally intelligent health literacy programs to be made available to all PLWH. Differences in viral suppression based on race should be closely monitored with timely transparent reporting. Using viral load data, NMAC recommends that money and resources are prioritize for “hot spots”, communities with a large numbers of PLWH who also have a high viral load. The money needs to follow the epidemic. The color of your skin should not determine your risk for HIV infection, viral load, or mortality. On this National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day, let’s commit to retaining everyone living with HIV into care. Yours in the struggle, Paul Kawata Executive Director National Minority AIDS Council ABOUT NMACThe National Minority AIDS Council (NMAC) builds leadership within communities of color to end the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Since 1987, NMAC has advanced this mission through a variety of programs and services, including: a public policy education program, national and regional training conferences, a treatment and research program, numerous publications and a website: http://www.nmac.org/.

We have expanded our HIV/AIDS educational materials. All on specials including the LINDI model and all our New educational boards. Check out our website for more details

http://www.totalaccessgroup.com/educational_supplies.html

National Minority AIDS Council (NMAC) Newsletter today highlighted their new Leadership Pipeline division. Total Access Group applauds NMAC's new initiative. Jacqueline Coleman is  leading this new division and summarized her focus in the NMAC 1-29-15 Newsletter:

I am very excited to return to the National Minority AIDS Council (NMAC), and am particularly honored that they’ve asked me to direct a new division called the Leadership Pipeline (LP). Ending the HIV epidemic in America requires visionary leaders who fight for the rights of all people living with the virus. My charge is to educate, train, and inspire new and existing leaders of color who will fight for racial justice in order to end the HIV epidemic in America

(NMAC newsletter 1-29-15)

National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day

As some of you my know, National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day is coming up on February 7th.

Be sure to check out our custom condoms for this special day:

http://www.totalaccessgroup.com/National-Black-HIVAIDS-Awareness-Feb-7_c_205.html

Here are some fun facts about the increase in HIV testing in the African-American community we found courtesy of the CDC (Center for Disease Control and Prevention)

http://www.cdc.gov/hiv/policies/progressreports/spr.html

Don't forget to get tested!

Increase HIV Testing (Ever): Blacks/African Americans
2015 national goal: Increase by 4% the percentage of blacks/African Americans ever tested for HIV
In 2011
• Nationally, the percentage was higher among blacks/African Americans (66.2%) than whites (38.1%).
• Fifteen states and the District of Columbia had met the nation’s 2015 goal (68.8%).
• In 29 states, the percentage among blacks/African Americans was below the national percentage for blacks/African Americans
(66.2%).

Increasing HIV testing among racial/ethnic groups with a higher burden of HIV is an important strategy for improving health and reducing HIV transmission in these groups. Although blacks/African Americans represent about 12% of the US population, more new HIV infections occur among blacks/African Americans than any other racial/ethnic group. Increasing the percentage of blacks/African Americans ever tested for HIV will require that more health care providers implement the recommendation of both the US Preventive Services Task Force and CDC for routine HIV screening for adolescents and adults and for at least annual HIV testing of persons likely to be at high risk of HIV. In addition, culturally competent community-based HIV testing programs that reach blacks/African Americans will continue to play an important role.

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