Commemorating National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day (February 7)
Posted February 4, 2022
This February 7th, we recognize National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day and recommit to dismantling racism in HIV care and reducing health disparities in Black communities. While prevention efforts are reducing some burden of HIV infection, more progress is needed. The CDC reports that in 2018, Blacks/African Americans accounted for 13% of the U.S. population but 42% of the 37,832 new HIV diagnoses in the United States and dependent areas.
Racism, discrimination, and mistrust in the health care system may affect whether Black people seek or receive HIV prevention, treatment, and care. We must work to stop HIV stigma and overcome structural barriers to HIV testing, prevention, and treatment to help reduce health inequities in Black communities.
Pacific AETC has held multiple trainings and seminars on challenging structural racism in the context of HIV, COVID-19, obstetrics, and more. These are valuable opportunities to better understand health inequities and structural racism, strengthen our anti-racist framework, and best inform our work.
Access Our On-Demand Trainings below:
The Intersection of Misogynoir: Obstetric Racism & HIV, a 3-part series
Speaker: Dr. Karen A. Scott, MD, MPH, FACOG.
Presented by the Pacific AIDS Education & Training Center, HIVE, and the National Clinician Consultation Center.
Session #1, November 12, 2021: From Slavery to Sovereignty: Reclaiming Our Time, Narratives, Bodies, Lives, Families, and Futures
Topics covered: Historical and contemporary context of Anti-Black gendered racism, misogynoir, and obstetric racism: frameworks, theories, and concepts in relation to HIV-related stigma and patient health care experiences.
Session #2, December 3, 2021: Reimagining STI/HIV Risk and Sexual Behavior and Health among Black Women & Girls: Theoretical Approaches in Problem Analysis and Solution Building
Topics covered: Structural analysis of power and access to care using a Black feminist praxis: Misogynoir, obstetric racism, and service provision for HIV patient populations, evaluation, and training.
Session #3, January 7, 2021: Black Mothers Living with HIV Navigating Health Care Systems: Problem Analysis and Solution Building Using Narrative Inquiry & Applications of the PREM-OB Scale™ Suite
Topics covered: Participatory Action Research: Knowledge construction, patient voice, community leadership and reciprocity. Antidotes to HIV Stigma & Stigmatization, Obstetric Racism, & Misogynoir for Black Women, Girls, & Gender Expansive People.
HIV Learning Network – Challenging Structural Racism in HIV Care
This presentation was given on July 8, 2021 by Monica Hahn, MD, MPH, AAHIVS, Clinical Director, Pacific AETC, Associate Medical Director, HIVE Clinic, and Associate Professor, Family and Community Medicine, UCSF.
Description: For the last 15 months, the HIV workforce has been experiencing a convergence of three pandemics: HIV, COVID-19, and Structural Racism. Only one of these pandemics is recent. In order for us to understand how health inequities in HIV and COVID-19 occur, we must examine their associations to long existing systemic racism. Dr. Monica Hahn, MD, MPH, AAHIVS, will provide an overview of structural racism in the context of the HIV and COVID-19 pandemic, review what lessons we have learned from HIV and COVID-19 that can inform our work, and help us move toward providing services with an anti-racist framework.
The Intersection of Structural Racism, HIV and COVID-19; Strategies to dismantle systems that perpetuate Health Inequities
This webinar was presented on August 6, 2020.
Description: The individual and societal-level impacts of structures that perpetuate racism and health inequities on populations with HIV combined with COVID-19 meet at an intersection that has created a crisis requiring an emergency response from various sectors. This webinar will examine the intersection of structural racism, HIV, and COVID-19 while hearing experts on opportunities to make paradigm shifts for healthcare and social justice systems. We will discuss lessons learned from the HIV epidemic that apply to COVID-19, structural racism, and health inequities
More #NBHAAD resources:
The Office of Infectious Disease and HIV/AIDS Policy will host a Live with Leadership webinar on Monday, February 7 at 2:00 pm. The session will focus on how communities, the Ending the HIV Epidemic initiative, and the National HIV/AIDS Strategy prioritizes ending the HIV epidemic in Black communities.
Check out the National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day webpages from CDC and HIV.gov for more information and resources.
HIV/AIDS-Related Research and African Americans
NIH Strategic Plan for HIV and HIV-Related Research (FY 2021-2025), from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Office of AIDS Research (OAR). The Plan describes NIH research priorities to prevent, treat, and eventually cure HIV/AIDS. An overarching focus of NIH HIV research is to better understand health disparities, including disparities that may be linked to race and ethnicity.
Research Related to HIV/AIDS and African Americans:
- Research within the past year, from PubMed.gov
- Research from the Education Resources Information Center (ERIC)
Additional Information and Resources
From CDC:
From the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Minority Health:
From the Office of AIDS Research:
