Estimated read time: 4-5 minutes
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
[STK]
[IN] HEA MTC
[SU] BLK WOM AVO
TO HEALTH, AND NATIONAL EDITORS:
CDC Locks Out Black Providers in New AIDS Technical Assistance
Announcement, Says the Black AIDS Institute
Phill Wilson is President and CEO of the Black AIDS Institute, the only national HIV/AIDS think tank in the United States focused exclusively on Black people. Follow him on Twitter @iamphillwilson. Wilson is also available for interviews and press inquiries. Contact 213-353-3610, ext. 105, or PhillWilson@BlackAIDS.org.
LOS ANGELES, April 2, 2014 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- On March 19 the
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) awarded $115 million
over five years to 21 organizations to provide technical assistance to
health departments and organizations implementing CDC's new prevention
strategies and improving health outcomes for people living with
HIV/AIDS. Not one of these organizations is a Black organization. The
effect of this decision is that Black organizations have been locked
out of leading technical assistance and capacity building in this
country for the next five years.
This should be an issue of concern for Black people, the public at
large and anyone who is interested in ending America's AIDS epidemic.
Let's look at the numbers: There are about 1.2 million Americans
living with HIV today. Nearly 50 percent of them are Black. Of women
living with HIV in the U.S., nearly 64 percent are Black; among gay
and bisexual men, 32 percent are Black.
At a time when Black Americans are more likely to be diagnosed late in
their disease, less likely to be in care, have poorer clinical
outcomes and die quicker than any other racial or ethnic group, the
decision not to fund any Black organizations in this program further
dismantles what little infrastructure exists in Black communities to
address HIV/AIDS. Health departments and organizations that
desperately need technical assistance to respond to a rapidly changing
health-care environment will be unable to turn to an organization
grounded in the experience of Black communities.
And over the last few years, a number of Black AIDS organizations have
had to close because of lack of funding. Both CDC and Black AIDS
Service Organizations (ASOs) will offer various reasons. The CDC might
maintain that the pool of Black applicants was small and that some did
not demonstrate sufficient programmatic capacity, had administrative
challenges or were eliminated for technical reasons.
The Black organizations might counter by saying that the process
completely disregards the value of cultural competency, denies Black
organizations opportunities to focus on their strengths, and
inherently advantages larger organizations that can farm out their
grant writing over smaller organizations that are better equipped to
deliver services.
The CDC appears to be more obsessed with having a pristine
grant-making process than with making sure the outcomes of that
process reflect the communities most at risk for HIV. Many Black AIDS
organizations have prioritized cultural competency and resisted
retooling themselves in order to respond to the changing HIV/AIDS
landscape.
There is plenty of blame and finger-pointing to go around, but it all
misses the point. We are failing in our fight to end the AIDS
epidemic in Black America. Indeed, in some areas we are losing
ground.
Nearly 64 percent of newly diagnosed women, nearly 67 percent of newly
diagnosed youth (ages 13-19) and 36 percent of newly diagnosed gay
bisexual men in America are Black.
Here's the question: Is it in the interest of ending the AIDS
epidemic-and particularly of ending the epidemic in Black
communities-to have a service delivery network that is void of Black
providers?
The CDC's decision basically creates a technical assistance elite that
perpetuates a notion that outside technical assistance providers can
parachute in to rescue communities, and violates the notion that
(properly supported) communities have both the responsibility and the
capacity to save themselves. As Calvin Rolark, the founder of the
United Black Fund, said, "Nobody can save us . . . but us."
Whatever the reasons, it's imperative that communities, AIDS
organizations and government agencies like the CDC work together to
make sure that we have a geographically and racially diverse HIV
service-delivery system.-And that all HIV service providers have both
the cultural and subject-matter competency and the administrative
bandwidth to deliver the services that our communities need and
deserve.
Both the message and the messenger matter. Unless we are explicitly
included, we are implicitly excluded. In order to end the AIDS
epidemic in Black communities, the AIDS service-delivery system must
reflect the communities most at risk. Unless Black people see
themselves at every level of the care-delivery system and every point
of the treatment cascade, we will continue to see the unacceptable
outcomes that currently exist in Black communities.
In the interest of disclosure, the Black AIDS Institute is a small
subcontractor to one of the CDC grantees.
SOURCE Black AIDS Institute
-0- 04/02/2014
/Web Site: http://www.blackaids.org
CO: Black AIDS Institute
ST: California
IN: HEA MTC
SU: BLK WOM AVO
PRN
-- DC97358 --
0000 04/02/2014 23:59:00 EDT http://www.prnewswire.com
Copyright © The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
