This year’s U.S. Conference on AIDS, held Sept.10-13 at D.C.’s Marriott Marquis, brought together researchers, physicians, advocates, educators, and those living with HIV together to discuss real-time solutions to eliminating AIDS – particularly within at-risk populations.
While highlights of the conference included the successful trials of pre exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) – a drug (known as Truvada) that claims to prevent the virus among at-risk populations, many Black participants, including the Black AIDS Institute, examined how best to address rates of new infection, issues of access and outreach, and what PrEP means for Black populations.
Dr. June Gipson, director of Open Arms Healthcare Center in Jackson, Mississippi and other administrators in the summit said, during the Black PrEP Summit, that even as initiatives are implemented, keeping HIV in the forefront of the American mind, was critical, especially with the success of PrEP.
“There’s this idea that the PrEP will change everything – it’s not a magic pill – it is simply an option,” said Gipson, who lamented the positive diagnosis of two 19-year-old Black males who came to Open Arms recently to be put on PrEP. “Behaviors are going to be behaviors, but to have an option is the most important thing.”
Calling the diagnoses “devastating,” Gipson emphasized the need for sex education and prevention as life-saving.
“To actually take those steps to protect yourself with PrEP, only to find that you are already positive, is a painful reality,” Gipson said. “But this is why you cannot start sex education at seventeen and eighteen, because those behaviors are formed and once they are formed, it takes a long time to break and change them.”
Phill Wilson, founder of the Black AIDS Institute told the AFRO that not only was it imperative that AIDS educators commit to better outreach that it is inclusive of new media and new minds.
“HIV today is driven by innovation, whether we’re talking about the new biomedical teams, or PrEP treatment as prevention, or even new communications tools, like Twitter, Facebook and Instagram,” Wilson said. “If we’re talking about getting to the endgame, if we’re really going to be serious about ending the epidemic for everybody – not some bodies – we are going to involve young people, we’re going to need to communicate in different ways and we’re going to need to ensure they understand and we incorporate new technologies.”
Wilson also said that small businesses and other organizations, in positions to provide better access to prevention methods, including health insurance, had to take their responsibilities more seriously.
“We have a plan as a Black agency where no one pays a premium whatsoever. We have a co-pay that’s ten dollars – if you have a baby, it costs you ten dollars; if you have a kidney transplant, it costs you ten dollars – and a prescription costs you five dollars, no matter what it is,” Wilson said. “We’re a small organization, but it was a decision that we made that if you work fulltime for us, you get insurance and if you work part time for us, you get the same insurance. These are things that you make a choice with and you have to walk the walk if you’re going to talk the talk.”
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