Ending the HIV/AIDS epidemic starts in Houston

Many people in the United States think the HIV/AIDS epidemic is a thing of the past — a distant memory from the ’80s and ’90s, when the world lacked the tools necessary to treat and prevent this new disease and, consequently, an HIV diagnosis was considered a death sentence.

While it’s true that we have come a long way since then — diagnosis rates have dropped and people living with HIV are now able to lead long, fulfilling lives — the sad, underappreciated fact is that the HIV/ AIDS epidemic is far from over. In fact, it’s alive and well: an urgent public health issue, that continues to be a problem right here in Houston’s backyard.

Texas has the third highest population of people living with HIV in the country. In Houston alone, more than 20,000 people are living with HIV, with 1,200 more people being diagnosed each year. The South overall bears the greatest share of new HIV diagnoses, illness and deaths of any region in the country, with about 45 percent of all people living with HIV, plus nearly half of all HIV/AIDS-related deaths, found in the region.

The problem is particularly acute in communities of color for a host of reasons that include stigma, poverty, racial inequality and lack of access to health care. Each of these causes trickles down to affect the day-to-day experiences of people living with HIV, resulting in obstacles to care. In Houston, almost half of people diagnosed with HIV between 2011 and 2015 were black, nearly a third were Hispanic/ Latino and 13 percent were white. Among black women in Houston the disparity is even more stark; in 2014, for every white woman diagnosed with HIV in Houston, 21 black women were diagnosed.

Yet despite these astonishing numbers, the South lags far behind the rest of the United States in providing quality HIV prevention and care. We can’t let this stand.

Knowing what we know, what do we do?

If we want to stop the HIV/AIDS epidemic in its tracks, we need to apply new strategies to fight not just the disease itself, but the structural and social factors that contribute to its ongoing prevalence in the South.

Thankfully, the city of Houston has unique tools and resources at its disposal to do exactly that. At the University of Houston Graduate College of Social Work SUSTAIN (Supporting U.S. Southern States to Incorporate Trauma-informed HIV/AIDS Initiatives for Wellbeing) Wellbeing Center, social workers, researchers, clinicians and medical professionals have spent more than a decade bringing effective interventions to marginalized communities affected by the disease. The SUSTAIN Wellbeing Center’s strategy is to focus attention on the role of wellness, trauma, mental health and substance use, all of which both impede treatment programs for those living with AIDS and contribute to the further spread of the disease.

Recently, Gilead Sciences has announced a $5 million grant to the SUSTAIN Wellbeing Center to enhance HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment in six states along the Gulf Coast with the highest HIV rates in the South — Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia and Florida. The grant to the SUSTAIN Wellbeing Center is part of Gilead’s unprecedented $100 million, 10-year commitment announced in early December, called the Gilead COMPASS Initiative, to fight the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the South.

If we don’t fight HIV/AIDS here, we can’t and won’t eliminate this disease elsewhere. That’s why the Gilead COMPASS Initiative will support local HIV/AIDS organizations, in Houston and throughout the South, to dramatically increase their reach and impact, provide technical trainings and support innovative and culturally-sensitive HIV prevention and treatment work.

It would be easy to look at the numbers and lose hope. But for the sake of our communities, we can’t — especially when we have tools at our disposal that can make an impact. HIV and AIDS are often part of a wider picture of trauma and marginalization. By equipping people already working in communities across the country with the resources they need to take their work to the next level, we can stop HIV/AIDS once and for all — in Houston and across the South.

Ali is the director of the COMPASS SUSTAIN Center and an assistant professor at the University of Houston Graduate College of Social Work. Brooks is the senior director for community engagement at Gilead and former director of the Office of National AIDS Policy under the Obama administration.