USCA TARGETS COMMUNITIES OF COLOR

The United States Conference on AIDS (USCA) which convened in Palm Springs, California last week integrated the upscale desert community like it had never been diversified before.

More than 3,000 delegates gathered for the biggest AIDS conference in the United States, and the majority of us were Black, Hispanic, Asian/Pacific Islander, female or gay. The National Minority AIDS Coalition (NMAC) assembled the meeting around the theme “One Family, One Voice, One Spirit,” with a particular focus on HIV/AIDS as a crisis in African American communities.

“We speak with many voices and many faces,” said Ravinia Hayes-Cozier, head of Government Relations & Public Policy at NMAC. “But, whether we are focused on black gay men or the issues facing heterosexual African-American women, we speak and work with the same goal in mind: reducing and eliminating HIV/AIDS from our communities.”

Cable Positive joined forces with the A/PI Wellness Center of San Francisco in presenting a workshop aimed at communicating messages of education, awareness and prevention to communities of color. We shared a powerful cross-section of our past and present PSAs with conference attendees, a short documentary of celebrities behind the scenes working to fight AIDS, and a movie trailer for the upcoming documentary “Positive Voices: Women& HIV” which will be aired on Showtime Networks on November 30. The A/PI Wellness Center, represented by its Policy Director Lina Sheth, presented a detailed case study, demonstrating the effectiveness of the joint campaign between Cable Positive and the Center over the past 3 years. This year’s PSAs aimed specifically at A/PI communities across the country featured actors BD Wong & Jose Llana.

Cable Positive also met with representatives from AIDS Service Organizations from across the country and provided information about our targeted and national awareness campaigns, and our Tony Cox Community Fund which has formed more than 275 AIDS organization/cable system partnerships in local communities across 40 States.

Famed singer, entertainer Nancy Wilson—the newest Board member of NMAC—summarized the commitment of conference participants to continue to battle the epidemic. “ I thought after 55 years as an entertainer, I would be able to retire, and just enjoy being a grandmother,” Wilson said. “But I learned that there was much work still to be done. Young people need to know how to take responsibility for their health, and feel empowered to make the right choices.”

Cable Positive’s new, youth-oriented media campaign and our message that we “still have much work to do,” was perfectly in sync with HIV/AIDS leaders across the country.