Why the HIV/AIDS Epidemic Among Women and Girls Is an Economic Issue

This is the 9th year that we have commemorated National Women and Girls HIV/AIDS Awareness Day. This year the theme is "Share Knowledge. Take Action".

In the spirit of sharing knowledge, the one thing I know about HIV is that confronting stigma, getting testing, practicing safer sex, avoiding drug use including alcohol—I add that because so many of us think only about IV drugs; however, alcohol plays a prominent role in altering our decision-making—talking about prevention with our families, friends and our seniors—all of these practices are encouraged and reinforced on Women and Girls HIV/Aids Awareness Day. Thus, the cornerstone of these activities is "self-love".

I'd like to see us—and especially Black women and girls—engage in a campaign that's all about self-love. I love the Greater Than AIDS campaign—I love it, I celebrate Alicia Keys and the We are Empowered movement. But to be empowered and to know that you're greater than a virus, you must have self-love. To build self love I recommend a very old and ancient practice that's simple: Look in mirror and say, "I love myself" at least 7 times. You'd be surprised at what comes up and comes out. And what begins to occur over the life of engaging in that practice is that you begin to advocate for yourself. Once you can advocate for self, you can then advocate for others.

As microbiological research advances, the Black Aids Institute's campaign for an AIDS free generation gains momentum and pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) is made readily available, we must talk. We have to have conversations with ourselves, speak truth to ourselves and our communities. We must demand and advocate for appropriate messages as well as for care and treatment for women and girls within the Unites States of America, Africa and the Caribbean. It is an economic and social imperative that the public and private sector understand the feminization of HIV/AIDS.

Throughout the nine years of HIV awareness for women and girls, females have increasingly populated the statistics. Indeed today, 27 percent of new HIV cases occur among women and 67 percent of those consist of Black women. Women must develop the solution for women, and Black women must lie at the vortex of that solution.

When I think about this reality, I think of a famous 19th-century sculpture by the French artist Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux, The Four Parts of the World, in which women are dancing and orbiting while holding up the world. Women can change and accomplish anything; however, this message is not articulated in the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Yet I know that during the Industrial Revolution and World War II, women became machinists because they had to.

I know that before litigating the famous Sarah Keys v. Carolina Coach case that won Black people the right to participate in interstate travel—yes, I mean taking the Greyhound bus across state lines—and sitting in the White House parlor with Mary McLeod Bethune and Eleanor Roosevelt, African American civil rights activist and lawyer Dovey Roundtree served in the Women Armed Forces. Today, women can and must bring this epidemic to an end. Our forebears knew that women are the impetus for change. The time has come for us to remember and activate that, too.

Dovey Roundtree is my role-model. She always used to say that it's important both to be relevant and to surround yourself with women who are too busy to do anything but the work. The HIV/AIDS movement is relevant; however, we have not engaged the women who are too busy to do anything but the work. It's imperative that we get them to understand that across race and class HIV is infecting 13- to 65-year-old women and girls. Black women, white women and Latina women—that's the sequence of who is hit hardest. But just as The Dove, as I called her, Ms. Bethune and Eleanor Roosevelt strategized collectively, all of us can come together to change the trajectory of this disease.

Every foundation in the country has some education component, and many foundations have women in leadership. I encourage foundations to dedicate dollars to educating women and girls about how to protect themselves against HIV/AIDS. I encourage the Gates Foundation to develop domestic HIV/AIDS programming to match their international activity. I am concerned that if we don't seize the moment to end this epidemic, the impact of HIV/AIDS upon our communities and our corporations will escalate. And not only will it become a business issue, it will become a national security issue.

What makes me arrive at this conclusion? Let's examine the Department of Labor's statistics on women's participation in the workplace. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, by 2030, 57 percent of the workforce will consist of women. Today, 60 percent of Black women, 58 percent of White women, and 57 percent of Asian women and 56 percent of Hispanic women work.

Given those percentages, corporate America should be concerned that all women—and disproportionately Black women—are impacted by HIV/AIDS. If you still think the issue's not important, you're naive. Consider Black women. When Black women are impacted so is all of corporate America. In part, that's because we are well represented in the ranks of middle management. We make up the largest proportion of the workforce in critical jobs such as customer service, call centers and fulfillment—better known as getting the product out the door and providing customer service on shore. If Black women aren't coming to work, phone orders and issue resolution will not occur, customers will get their needs met by our international competitors, and America's products won't get shipped.

The Dove, Mrs. Bethune, Mrs. Roosevelt and the other women upon whose shoulders we stand understood feminization in a powerful way. They knew that collectives of women could come together to achieve similarly focused goals. Women who were so busy that they could sign on to the task and efficiently get it done.

HIV/AIDS is not an obscure social issue. It's an epidemic with economic and national security implications. Because it's impacting women—and particularly Black women in the numbers that the NIH, CDC and HHS report—it's impacting all of America. People who may not care about social responsibility certainly care about the bottom line. If corporate America doesn't act now, HIV/AIDS could have a huge economic impact in the not-so-distant future.

Finally, when some people talk about HIV/AIDS, they tend to limit the conversation to men who have sex with men (MSM). But following MSM Black women are the most affected group. You can't have a conversation about saving a nation without discussing both men and women. For Black people, in particular, to survive we have to have an overarching conversation about saving the race, and then we can segment messaging for targeted purposes. In HIV/AIDS the messenger matters. The messenger is critical to both funding and decisioning.

We have a lot of different activities going on. But I believe we need one collective message that we wear and communicate for the entire year.

In this issue we run a story about the 60,000 PLWHA who will continue not to have health insurance—about half of whom live in Georgia, Florida and Texas—because their states are not expanding Medicaid. You'll read a story recapping some of the activities that HBCU students engaged in to mark National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day.

Journalist Rod McCullom reminds us of how stigma impacts PLWHA's ability to seek care and treatment and experience good health. We continue with the series about HIV criminalization, courtesy of our friends at ProPublica. And we take a look at "My Brother's Keeper," the Obama administration's new initiative to support young men of color.

Finally, don't forget that the deadline for enrolling for health insurance under the Affordable Care Act is March 31st. If you haven't already signed up, go here. It's time.

In One Mind, I love myself

Grazell Howard, JD

Chair, Black Aids Institute