Black AIDS Institute releases 2011 State of AIDS in Black America Report

"This report doesn't just lay out the problem.  We know what the problems are," says Phill Wilson,  President and CEO of the Black AIDS Institute.  It provides a scan of  the HIV/AIDS landscape and makes recommendations on how to maximize the  potential of recent developments in order to finally begin to bring an  end to this dreadful disease."

According to the report, implementation of the Patient Protection and  Affordable Care Act (ACA) and the National HIV/AIDS Strategy (NHAS) are  extremely important to efforts to confront the HIV/AIDS epidemic.  But  in the current political environment, and as a result of recent changes  in the makeup of Congress, both are potentially threatened.  "With the  National HIV/AIDS Strategy we finally have a roadmap with clear goals,  objectives, and metrics to evaluate progress.  That's great.  But what  good is a roadmap if we don't have a mechanism to get to where we want  to go?" says Wilson.  "The administration, governmental agencies, and  Congress need to get behind the implementation of the strategy."

The report calls for implementation and scale up of health care  reform.  "The elimination of pre-existing conditions, lifting of  lifetime and annual spending caps on health coverage, the expansion of  access to prescription drugs, allowing people to remain on their  parents' health insurance policies are matters of life and death for  people living with HIV/AIDS," says Wilson.

Other recommendations in the report include improving the evidence  base for action to promote health care access; making sure the Centers  for Disease Control (CDC) carefully monitors and reports on HIV  prevention spending; taking steps to ensure that new biomedical  prevention tools are rapidly assessed, and if effective, expeditiously  implemented; and mobilizing Black communities to support a strong and  sustained AIDS response that ensures the success of the National  HIV/AIDS Strategy in Black communities.

The report concludes with suggestions of how individuals can  get involved in fighting the AIDS epidemic on a personal, community and  societal level.

"Every day, in ways both large and small, each of us has  deciding moments. Moments when we decide to do good, bad, or nothing.  Today we are at a collective deciding moment. Except when it comes to  HIV/AIDS, there is no difference between doing bad and doing nothing,"  says Wilson.

Download the full report as a pdf here.
Download the executive summary as a pdf here.