Black Churches Fighting HIV

From the Tennessean (Nashville, TN):

Taking an HIV test in the pulpit Sunday morning was itself simple.

At Spruce Street Baptist Church, one of Nashville's oldest and most established predominantly African-American congregations, a public health worker opened the test kit and handed the swab it contained to the Rev. Raymond Bowman.

Bowman opened his mouth and, well, swabbed.

In the two minutes that it took, there was awkward silence. There were murmurs. Musicians broke into a low-volume instrumental, usually reserved for moments of prayer.

That scene, or something like it, was repeated Sunday in 26 other predominantly African-American churches around Nashville.

The tests and the messages from pastors that followed about the value and ease of HIV testing, the opportunity for a free test and the need for every adult to know their status were part of a Metro Health Department effort to harness the power and influence of black churches to slow the spread of HIV.

"Sexuality has always been discussed in the black church," said Bowman, after the service. "It's just that with what is going on in the world today, it has got to move from the back burner to the front. We are going to continue to talk about abstinence. But if we want our daughters and our sons to be healthy enough to marry the people that they love, we are going to have to talk about testing, too."

The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimate at least 250,000 people in the United States are infected with HIV and are not aware of it. And in the 27 years since the HIV/AIDS epidemic began, African-Americans have come to contract HIV and die of AIDS at disproportionate rates.

While only 13 percent of the U.S. population is black, black men and women account for more than 49 percent of AIDS cases. AIDS is the leading cause of death for black women ages 25 to 34 and the second-leading cause of death for black men ages 35 to 44.

In Nashville, where about 27 percent of the population is black, 55 percent of AIDS cases involve black patients.

I hope more African-American churches follow this lead. Failing to address this issue doesn't make it go away--it only allows it to fester and grow worse.

Click here to read the rest of the article.