If current trends continue, if we persist in patchwork feel-good solutions to the continued increase in the rate of HIV infection among African American men and the community at large, the costs of treatment will soon overwhelm the health care resources of Los Angeles County and the State of California. Programs of prevention require immediate educational and media outreach, beginning at the middle school level where there is a captive audience of impressionable minds. The African American religious and church community needs to partner with health care and political leaders to educate the community; church leaders need to change the traditional message of homosexuality as a damnable sin into one of acceptance, understanding, and tolerance. The African American community needs to approach county political leaders with a grim reality: if changes aren’t made in the short term, in the long term there will be no living citizens left to lead. HIV-AIDS is an epidemic which is not going away simply because Magic Johnson appears to be in good health. The epidemic is not “cured” in any fashion. The ravaging symptoms of AIDS can be held in abeyance through the administration of powerful, astonishingly expensive drug protocols, but they are merely palliative, not curative, certainly not preventative. The only true preventative is behavioral change. Behavioral change does not occur without adequate motivation. Motivation does not occur without significant and inspiring leadership. The timeline for these changes and that leadership is now. Further delays based upon political or economic considerations will only make the problem worse. The data
If current trends continue, if we persist in patchwork feel-good solutions to the continued increase in the rate of HIV infection among African American men and the community at large, the costs of treatment will soon overwhelm the health care resources of Los Angeles County and the State of California. Programs of prevention require immediate educational and media outreach, beginning at the middle school level where there is a captive audience of impressionable minds. The African American religious and church community needs to partner with health care and political leaders to educate the community; church leaders need to change the traditional message of homosexuality as a damnable sin into one of acceptance, understanding, and tolerance. The African American community needs to approach county political leaders with a grim reality: if changes aren’t made in the short term, in the long term there will be no living citizens left to lead. HIV-AIDS is an epidemic which is not going away simply because Magic Johnson appears to be in good health. The epidemic is not “cured” in any fashion. The ravaging symptoms of AIDS can be held in abeyance through the administration of powerful, astonishingly expensive drug protocols, but they are merely palliative, not curative, certainly not preventative. The only true preventative is behavioral change. Behavioral change does not occur without adequate motivation. Motivation does not occur without significant and inspiring leadership. The timeline for these changes and that leadership is now. Further delays based upon political or economic considerations will only make the problem worse. The data