An article in the Sunday Los Angeles Times [Cookie and Magic Johnson and Spike Lee Help Fight HIV Among Blacks] highlights the "growing outspokenness among African Americans about the community's disproportionately high HIV rates." The number of women in the United States living with HIV has tripled in the last two decades, and today, HIV infection is the leading cause of death for African-American women aged 25-34 years.
Featured is Carrie Broadus, a leader of the National Women and AIDS Collective (NWAC), the first national policy coalition led by and for women living with and affected by HIV/AIDS, and housed at the Ms. Foundation for Women.
Many women don't even think about HIV because they don't practice such well-publicized risky behaviors as injecting drugs or having sex with multiple partners, said Carrie Broadus, executive director of Women Alive, a South Los Angeles-based organization for HIV-positive women.
NWAC continues its efforts to change policy including reform of the Center for Disease Control's statistics gathering to accurately reflect how and why women are acquiring HIV/AIDS and thus help make prevention more effective, particularly for those who do not see themselves at risk.
See our previous posting on women's efforts to fight HIV/AIDS and the role of the National Women and AIDS Collective.
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