In This Issue

 The Black AIDS Institute sponsored the first national Black PrEP summit yesterday. The theme was "Black Lives Matter: What's PrEP got to do with it?"

You might ask what PrEP has to do with the epidemic of police violence and the over-zealous policing and hyper-militarization of the police in Black communities?

The answer is everything.

We are not going to spend a lot of time talking about how race matters in who gets stopped by the police in America. And we're not going to focus on how race matters in who gets arrested, prosecuted, convicted, incarcerated or ends up dead in America.

We are going to talk about the role of HIV/AIDS in a Black Lives Matter agenda.

Here's the deal: If Black Lives matter, they have to matter before we lay face down dead in the street at the hands of a White police officer or a drive-by shooting.

If Black Lives matter, the achievement gap between Black youth and other racial ethnics group has to matter.

If Black Lives matter, the 70 percent unemployment rate among Black teenagers has to matter.

If Black Lives matter, the schoolyard-to-prison pipeline has to matter.

If Black Lives matter, the disproportionate impact of HIV/AIDS on Black women has to matter.

If Black Lives matter, the lack of a cohesive strategy to fight HIV/AIDS among Black Transwomen has to matter.

If Black Lives matter, the lives of Black gay and bisexual men have to matter.

PrEP and other biomedical interventions are essential to ending the AIDS epidemic in America. They could help reduce the HIV/AIDS disparities in this country or, if not applied properly, exacerbate them. Calvin Rolark, the founder of the Black Fund in Washington, D.C. said, "Nobody can save us from us but us." And nobody can end the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Black communities but Black people. PrEP is an important tool towards that goal. We don't plan to leave any tool in the toolbox. We are going to understand and use PreP, TasP, NPEP and all the other tools in the toolbox because Black Lives matter—at least to us!

In this issue we learn the troubling news that, even today, only one in five gay male teens gets an HIV test. With the incidence of new HIV infection among young gay and bisexual males rising, we will know that their lives matter when they all get HIV tests.

A study of nearly 10,000 people with hepatitis C shows that liver damage from hep C is much more common than researchers previously believed.

There's a racial disparity in attitudes toward hospice care, with Blacks significantly less likely to enroll in care or to have advance directives in place at the end of life. Kaiser Health News reports.

We are horrified to inform you that in August, the 17th transgender woman was killed in the United States in 2015. Our friends at Colorlines report.

Finally, a reminder of the benefits marketplace health insurance plans offer.

Yours in the struggle,

Phill