The Women of BTAN: Who Inspires You?

The women who give their time, energy, creativity and brilliance to Black Treatment Advocates Network (BTAN) chapters across the nation inspire us all. But who inspires these women? Who are the women who have shaped these sisters into the exceptional individuals they are today? We talked to some of our BTAN leaders to find out.

Three Strategies to Defend GOP Health Bill: Euphemisms, False Statements and Deleted Comments

Speaker of the House Paul Ryan conducting a presentation of the GOP's plan to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act

Since the passage of the American Health Care Act, Republican members of Congress have tried to swing public opinion to their side. ProPublica has been tracking what they're saying.

To End AIDS in the United States, Stay True to the National HIV/AIDS Strategy

Trump White House

Ten years ago, hundreds of organizations and individuals signed a petition calling on all presidential candidates to create a national AIDS strategy. We knew the approach to HIV in the U.S. had to change. If you read about AIDS in the paper, then it was likely about the horrifying scale of the global epidemic; the epidemic at home had largely become invisible. The national HIV response we saw was a patchwork: uncoordinated, without clear goals, underinvested where the challenge was most acute, with interventions delivered well below the scale necessary for impact. And the science of HIV prevention was changing dramatically without sufficient efforts to put it into practice.

To Fight the HIV Epidemic, We Need the Black Church

Marjorie Innocent, Ph.D., Senior Director of Health Programs, NAACP

Black Churches are more than places of worship. They are the vibrant hearts of the African-American community that bring the Gospel into our lives, inspire faith, grace, love and mercy and foster a deep commitment to service.

Topical PrEP Gel Can't Withstand Vaginal Flora; Oral PrEP Does

Nichole Klatt, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, in both the Department of Pharmaceutics and in Pathobiology, presents research on the effect of gardnerella on Tenofovir

Diverse communities of microbes in the vagina may have a role in a woman's vulnerability to HIV; however, they don't keep oral PrEP, or pre-exposure prophylaxis, pills from doing their job. These reassuring findings were presented at the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI), the world's largest HIV research meeting, in February 2017, where the vagina and its numerous microbial inhabitants were a hot topic.