30 Something

Since working for a non-profit, I have learned so much. For the past 7 months, I've been working on an HIV education and outreach program. I'm not sure how many of the young people have learned anything, but I've gained so much knowledge about the epidemiology of HIV. It has shifted from being a disease that predominately affected white homosexual males to being a disease that is plaguing the African American community. In 2007 the #1 killer of women ages 25-34 was HIV. Over half of all the new cases of HIV are African American. What is going on in our community. For so long African Americans have had clung to the myth that it's not in our community. It's time to wake up!!! It's in our community BIG TIME and it's affecting black women the most.

I've been reading Rae Lewis-Thornton's blog and she talks about her experience being affected with HIV and now living with AIDS. She had a meet-up, tweet-up on yesterday and I wished I could have attended in Chicago to help support her mission.

On her blog she talks about her daily life and the fight against her disease and how as the "face of HIV" in the African American community, she has taken a stand to live her life transparently so that other's won't become infected.

My life has changed through this experience. I am grateful and thankful to God that through my ignorance as a teen and young woman, I wasn't infected because it truly could have been me who is living with this 100% PREVENTABLE disease.

This entry was posted on Friday, July 16, 2010 at 5:24 PM. You can skip to the end and leave a response.