In This Issue

Two weeks ago at the U.S. Conference on AIDS in South Florida, Shantell Jamison, digital content editor for Ebony.com and JetMag.com, participated in a social media fellowship, sponsored by AIDS.gov, FHI360, the Human Rights Campaign, NMAC and the Black AIDS Institute. While attending the conference, Shantell gained some powerful insights into how important it is that each of us recommits ourselves to ending the HIV/AIDS epidemic. She shares her perspective here.

We also run a piece recapping AIDS.gov's Facebook Live broadcasts from USCA 2016, including one broadcast that addressed HIV/AIDS among Black gay men and another delivered in Spanish with social media fellows Alex Castro-Croy and Jesus Manuel Cotto Carrero.

Recently Colorlines interviewed Harvard University sociologist, public health researcher and African-American studies professor, David Williams, MPH, Ph.D., about the growing body of research in public health, sociology and medicine the strongly suggests that experiencing discrimination is bad for your health. In this issue we share that story.

New research shows that the Affordable Care Act increased health care coverage among the formerly incarcerated; however, substantial gaps remain among those on probation, parole or recently involved in the criminal justice system, particularly in states that haven't expanded Medicaid. If you will recall, research published in The Lancet this July found that mass incarceration was driving the HIV epidemic among Black women, in no small part because of this lack of linkage to care and treatment for many newly free HIV-positive men.

One health care issue issue appears to be hot during this year's presidential campaign: the rising cost of prescription drugs. Our friends at Kaiser Health News report.

Yours in the struggle,

Phill