The Orangeburg Community

Throughout my undergraduate journey at Morgan State University, I constantly heard of the most infamous rumor that has been passed down for decades: Morgan State was ranked with the highest rate HIV/AIDS and 80% of the students attending the university were HIV positive. As a health education major, this did not sit with me well, and I started to conduct some research to prove whether this infamous rumor had any actuality. I wanted to utilize what I learned as a health education and promotion major. Using my knowledge from my Assessment, Implementation, & Evaluation of Health Promotion Programs course, I implemented a program called the Student Wellness Ambassador Team also known as S.W.A.T. SW.A.T is dedicated to HIV/AIDS and STI

After the spread of AIDS to Africa, it began to spread to America in 1979 when African migrated to America they began to spread this with the people (Chelala97).The earliest form of AIDS was when an patient fifteen years olds was reported to have this disease. He never traveled outside the country so it was a possibility that it was transmitted to him in 1980.After this patient died it was reported that homosexual men started dying of this disease that was unidentified.

Many individuals have this malnourished ideal that HIV/AIDS is a disease based on race. “AIDS; which has ravaged minority community in disproportionately large numbers, must be viewed as racial issue, the national commission member on AIDS said yesterday” (Priest). Years ago Yale University law professor Harlon Dalton said this about HIV/AIDS, “We cannot approach the AIDS problem in a color blind fashion” (Priest). With this being said we need to stop pointing fingers at blacks’ for the disproportionate factor of HIV in this country. And also stop pointing fingers at black homosexuals.

African American young men are infected with HIV at an alarmingly high rate in comparison to other races. The negative stigmas that is attached to having HIV in the black community, especially for men can be extremely detrimental and harmful to their overall health. One stigma that was attached to having HIV was death, death was at one time believed to be imminent, and now HIV is about restructuring their lives to face the future (Buseh, Kelber, Stevens & Park, 2008, p.409), yet they still battle other stigmas surrounded around HIV.

This history of HIV/AIDS as a blurry timeline before the 1980’s since that was around the time reports came in which eventually become an HIV report. The origin of HIV can be traced back to the early part of the century. Some believe that in the 1920’s chimpanzees from the Congo came into contact with humans (Avert, 2016). Though reports were not identified as HIV until the 1980’s, the belief that HIV was already scattered throughout four other continents may have been incident (Avert, 2016). Even though for the past 30 years the world has been diligently working to find a cure and pushing prevention, we are still struggling each year with increasing diagnosis. The beginning of HIV did end with lots of death, but now with our improved antiviral medication there is hope for many.

HIV/AIDS is a disease with social, psychological and physiological consequences for those impacted by the illness. The impact of HIV and AIDS among African American women has been devastating. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC, 2010) reports that black women represent 29% of the estimated new HIV infections among all adult and adolescent African Americans and HIV/AIDS is the third leading cause of death for black women ages 25?44. Several

Health is a state of well being, and ideally, in an equal society, all people should be provided with the necessary tools to maintain that state of health. Ideals are mere fantasies, however, since even the most developed countries fall victim to health inequities. These inequities are avoidable inequalities in health between different groups of people. African Americans are among many other groups of people that fall victim to a system that, sometimes inconspicuously creates barriers wherein people cannot adequately arm themselves with the tools to remain healthy. One of the most common health inequities among African Americans is the HIV/AIDs virus. This viruses significance is relatively recent in human history, but the damage it has

According to recent statistics from the Centers for Disease Control, approximately 1.2 million individuals in the United States have HIV (about 14 percent of which are unaware of their infection and another 1.1 million have progressed to AIDS. Over the past decade, the number of HIV cases in the US has increased, however, the annual number of cases remains stable at about 50, 000 new cases per year. Within these estimates, certain groups tend to carry the burden of these disease, particularly the gay, bisexual, and men who have sex with men (MSM) and among race/ethnic groups, Blacks/African American males remain disproportionately affected. (CDC)

Human Immunodefiency Virus has become all too common in my hometown Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Rapidly this city has taken the number one spot leading the nation cases per capita of 100,000 people, according to Rene Taylor, Executive Director of Family Services of Greater Baton Rouge. (Feb., 2018). Baton Rouge holds its highest HIV cases in the North Baton Rouge area, where African Americas account for 95% of the residents. Studies show that age, poverty and education level is concurrent with most people infected with the virus. Baton Rouge has many organizations and government funded programs for all residents but coherence is proven to be low. Therefore, I posed the question: How do we decrease the HIV percental in Baton Rouge? I suggest we decrease the HIV epidemic in Baton Rouge by first, providing mandatory Education and statistics about the virus. Secondly, promoting

In The Invisible Cure, Helen Epstein talks about why HIV/AIDS rate is so high in Africa compared to the rest of the world. Through the book, she gives us an account of the disease and the struggles that many health experts and ordinary Africans went through to understand this disease, and how different African countries approached the same problem differently. Through this paper, I will first address the different ways Uganda and Southern African countries, South Africa and Botswana in particular, dealt with this epidemic, and then explain how we can use what we have learned from these African countries to control outbreaks of communicable disease elsewhere around the world.

We must educate African-American MSM men, on the dangers of not getting tested and passing the virus onto others. It is now illegal to have sexual relations with someone and not mention that they are HIV positive (HIV Disclosure Policy and Procedures,

Africa has a history of facing many challenges, including starvation, poverty, Ebola and AIDS. AIDS, however, has become Africa’s biggest hurdle. Botswana, located in Southern Africa, has been hit the hardest by the AIDS virus with over 23% of its population contracting AIDS. In order to help fix the AIDS epidemic in Botswana, multiple things need to be reviewed, such as understanding how AIDS spread throughout Botswana, where the region currently stands on the AIDS virus, and the three solutions on how to prevent the rise in the spreading of the virus within the area. According to the website Avert, studies have shown that the most effective ways to help stop the spread of AIDS includes testing centers, intervention centers, and the distribution of more protective measures.

According to the CDC, one in eighty-five Mississippians will acquire HIV in their lifetime (Division of HIV/AIDS Prevention, National Center for HIV/AIDS, Viral Hepatitis, STD, and TB Prevention, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2017). In 2015, there were 509 reported cases of HIV, of those cases 80% were African American and 30% were between the ages of 13-24 (Mississippi State Department of Health, 2016). As research demonstrates that the burden of HIV rests in the young African American community, the study will be conducted in four of the six HBCUs in Mississippi. Sites for recruitment of participants will include, Jackson State University (JSU), Alcorn State University, Tougaloo College and Mississippi

HIV and AIDS have affected millions of people throughout the world. Since 1981, there have been 25 million deaths due to AIDS involving men, women, and children. Presently there are 40 million people living with HIV and AIDS around the world and two million die each year from AIDS related illnesses. The Center for Disease Control estimates that one-third of the one million Americans living with HIV are not aware that they have it. The earliest known case of HIV was in 1959. It was discovered in a blood sample from a man in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo. Looking further into the genetics of this blood sample researchers suggested that it had originated from a virus going back to the late 1940’s or early 1950’s. In 1999,

The origin of AIDS can be traced back to 1959 in Zaire, but it wasn’t until the 1980s where AIDS was discovered that it can be transmitted by bodily fluids and that HIV operates by destroying the T-4 cell, which makes people vulnerable to infections. This was an important as it showed retroviruses such as HIV can cause other diseases.