By Matt Simonette

Staff writer

An early winter storm did not stop a small group of community members and AIDS advocates from gathering at Test Positive Aware Network’s Edgewater headquarters Dec. 5 for a discussion about the impact of HIV/AIDS in the African American community.

“Committed to Living—Advocating for Our Brothers and Sisters in Our Own Backyard” was the December installment of TPAN’s monthly “Committed to Learn” educational series.

Panelists were Charles Nelson of South Side Help Center, Michael Grego of Near North Health Services Corp. and Yaa Simpson of the Chicago Department of Public Health.

Greco began the discussion when he said one of the biggest barriers to HIV/AIDS prevention in the African American community was a lack of education in that community.

He said churches must shoulder some of the blame for clinging to a message of abstinence, which statistics prove usually falls on deaf ears. He told of giving a presentation at a local church and seeing that the minister intended to scare his flock about HIV/AIDS. Prevention, he said, very often falls to “scare tactics, which we know don’t work.”

Nelson further identified three factors that deter the community from getting accurate information—racism, sexism and unemployment.

“Prevention is not taught equally. In order for prevention to be taught equally, everyone has to have the same equal rights,” Nelson said, adding that until equality is achieved there would always be populations whose healthcare needs are served disproportionately.

“Those barriers make it harder for people of color to think about, ‘Can I protect myself this week? I need to worry about getting some food. I need to worry about someone finding out that I’m gay. I need to worry about what whether I’m going to have a job next week,’” Nelson said. “If we don’t get some structure in our society where people are equal, I think unfortunately HIV will be around at least for a little longer.”

Nelson said massive prevention efforts would be needed for all sides of the city to be served equally.

“You don’t see (prevention efforts) on the South Side and the West Side in the same way,” he added.

Many men and women from those parts of town prefer coming to the North Side because even being spotted having literature about HIV/AIDS is enough to stigmatize someone, Nelson said.

Simpson said many researchers and policymakers need to look beyond labels about sexual preferences when setting up education and prevention efforts, and focus instead on specific behaviors that increase risk. Such labels, she said, can imply judgments that impede understanding the disease.

“It’s difficult to make sense when we come up with these moral tandems to describe a scientific event,” she added.

She said that one way to destigmatize HIV/AIDS is to place it in the context of other diseases.

“We talk about diabetes. We talk about cancer. We talk about HIV. I’m not negating the importance of HIV. I’m saying HIV is chronic,” Simpson said, adding, “The way to destigmatize it is to show that everyone suffers from something.”

TPAN’s “Committed to Learn” workshops run monthly and are open to the public. For more information, call (773) 989-9400 or visit www.tpan.com.