In This Issue

We open this week's issue by continuing our series about our 2016 AAHU graduates, this week profiling Arkansas Fellow Carleisha Murry-Anderson.

Next, we run several pieces from our friends at AIDS.gov summarizing some of the news and information presented at CROI earlier this month. Over the coming weeks, will dig more deeply into some of the breaking news from CROI that's most relevant to Black America.

Though we've received good news that new HIV infections have declined, we've also learned some disturbing news: Gay and bisexual men today are less likely to use condoms than they were two decades ago. This is a recipe for disaster and all the more important that films like this year's Academy Award-winning Best Picture, Moonlight—a film that grabs us by the ears, pulls us in, and begs us to look into a Black boy's eyes and see him—all of him, and to really finally have his back—are so important. Black lives matter.

Finally, beginning on Sunday, people of faith over the nation will gather for the National Week of Prayer for the Healing of AIDS. I pray every day for the end of the AIDS epidemic. But faith without works is dead. So in honor of my faith, this week I will be praying, this week I will be working, this week I will be educating, this week I will be advocating for Black boys and men like Moonlight's Chiron (a.k.a. Black), because my faith is alive.

Yours in the struggle,

Phill