AAHU Fellow Cheryl Davis: 'God Revealing God's Self to Me'

AAHU Fellow Cheryl Davis

One in a series about recent graduates of the African American HIV University (AAHU).

I was a project manager with the city of Richmond, Va., for 15 years, directing multimillion-dollar projects and giving presentations to various government groups, before becoming an HIV prevention specialist with Faith Community Baptist Church. None of that experience compared to the training that I did as part of AAHU. I struggled at the start of the course, thinking I'd be unable to grasp the science and biomedical concepts. My faith, plus encouraging words from the training assistant, BAI staff, AAHU Fellow Lindsay Bryant and my pastor, helped me to endure.

My HIV advocacy began at Faith Community Baptist Church, where I have been a member for 20 years. The church's HIV ministry began in 1997 after the church deacons found out that a church member could no longer attend services due to caregiving responsibilities for her mother, who had contracted HIV. That experience, combined with learning that a friend had found out her HIV status through an insensitive denial-of-life-insurance letter, gave me the motivation to become engaged. I realized how much the disease touched my community and people who looked like me, and knew I had to get involved to make a difference.

The SISTA (Sisters Informing Sisters About Topics on AIDS) curriculum, a national intervention project for HIV prevention in African American women, was my first project with the HIV ministry. At that time I coordinated a youth sexuality lock-in—a citywide program where 200 youth participated in a weekend interactive HIV prevention course, where they stayed on-site overnight—which we eventually took to a statewide level involving 400 youth. I also took a social-skills program to local jails and state prisons and housing developments because being able to communicate effectively and express your needs in an assertive manner, rather than aggressively with your partner, ties in to HIV prevention.

Two simultaneous events led me to apply to AAHU. Our church is a trusted member of the community; people come to us with concerns we hadn't planned to address, from legal problems to school board issues. One gentleman in particular shared that he was HIV positive and trying to figure out how to navigate the system. At that time we were only offering preventive education. Around the same time, I was attending a quarterly meeting at the Virginia Department of Health, where I learned about the science, treatment and prevention literacy offered at AAHU. I knew the additional training would help me to better serve the community.

At the end of the AAHU program, I felt I had reached a major milestone. Since completing the program, I've also been promoted to outreach coordinator at Community in Development (CID), where the church's HIV activities are now housed. The knowledge I gained at AAHU has improved my skills in training CID's prevention specialists and teaching the graduate-level course for ministers interested in starting HIV ministries. I can now answer questions about PrEP, whose availability is very limited in Virginia, with few private doctors in Richmond offering the preventive medication. Fortunately, the Richmond City Health District started prescribing PrEP in February.

I now encourage church members to attend AAHU. Personally, I am grateful for the support I received there and the opportunity to learn how much I didn't know about HIV. This experience could not have been planned; I believe it was just God revealing God's self to me.

As told to April Eugene, a Philadelphia-based writer.