Nearly three decades after HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, was discovered, health and medical researchers know at least half of all new infections are in people under age 25. Still, the nation’s estimated 17 million college students have not been considered by health care providers to be a high-risk group for contracting HIV/AIDS, says Craig Roberts, an epidemiologist who chairs the American College Health Association’s Sexual Health Education and Clinical Care Coalition.
But not all HIV/AIDS risk is equal, points out Dr. Peter Leone who five years ago uncovered an outbreak of HIV among 84 young men on nearly 40 North Carolina university campuses. That disturbing upsurge of HIV infections was driven by college-aged Black men aged 17-27 who have sex with men , said Leone, the incoming chairman of the National Coalition of STD Directors and an associate professor of infectious diseases at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill School of Medicine. The rate of infection among that population signaled “a public health emergency” for Leone and others on the frontline of the epidemic that isn’t showing signs of abating.
Health disparities and other socioeconomic factors already impacting Blacks compound their risk of contracting HIV/AIDS, say researchers. That is why some leading Black AIDS organizations are responding to the epidemic’s disproportionate impact by mobilizing networks of Black college students who can both reach their peers with education and prevention messages and empower those in the Black community who struggle to respond to the enormity of the disease.
The disparate impact on African-Americans and other minorities who represent 67 percent of new HIV infections should also spur Black college leadership and HBCUs to “step up,” Leone maintains. Some, although not as many as he would like, are doing just that.
In separate events this September, the National Minority AIDS Council and the National Black Leadership Commission on AIDS launched partnerships with Bennett College in Greensboro, N.C.; Virginia Union University in Richmond, Va.; Howard University in Washington, D.C.; and Bowie State University in Maryland, to support campus-based HBCU HIV/AIDS Peer Education Initiatives.
“We need our students to strengthen HIV prevention and education efforts in the communities that they touch and demand that their peers know their HIV status … and their communities contribute to reducing the incidence of this preventable disease,” explains Dr. Julianne Malveaux, president of Bennett College.
