Saving a generation: North Carolina public health department partners with state's Black colleges to raise awareness about HIV/AIDS

Black Issues in Higher Education, March 24, 2005 by Crystal L. Keels

North Carolina A&T does it. Across the street, Bennett College does it too. So do Elizabeth City State University, Livingstone and Fayetteville State. These North Carolina-based historically Black institutions have made HIV/AIDS education a part of the student experience at their respective campuses, and one school, Johnson C. Smith University, has gone so far as to make it mandatory for all incoming first-year students. These educational interventions could not be more timely, because all 12 of the state's historically Black schools began their efforts before alarming new statistics about the rise in HIV/AIDS cases among Blacks in North Carolina made national headlines last year.

According to recent findings from the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the incidence of HIV/AIDS infection is 14 times higher among heterosexual Black women ages 18-40 in North Carolina than for Whites in the same range. This surge in the number of Black women testing positive for HIV/AIDS follows reports in 2003 of the increase of infection rates among young Black college men in North Carolina, most of whom were either identified as MSM (men who have sex with men), or men who have sex with both men and women. According to many reports, 70 percent of the HIV/AIDS population is African American, both in North Carolina and the United States in general.

In response, HIV/AIDS awareness, education and testing have become the primary weapons to fight what figures to be another challenge to African-American health and wellness. And with North Carolina's HBCUs as the major battleground, it's no exaggeration to say that state health and education administrators are fighting to save a generation.

"This is a problem for the (entire) African-American community," says Phyllis Gray, director of the HIV/STD Prevention and Care Branch of the North Carolina Division of Public Health. "It doesn't matter if you are a CEO or a wino, we are a state agency trying to eliminate serious health disparities. We have to figure out what to do. It is an agency mandate to take care of the needs of North Carolinians."

To achieve that goal, the agency established contracts with the state's HBCUs to enhance HIV/AIDS education efforts. The program, Project Commit to Prevent, was put in place June 1,2003.

"If you want to serve a population, you have to mobilize all the people who can help," Gray says about the partnerships forged between the North Carolina Public Health office and the state's 12 HBCUs.

In its first year, the project provided a mechanism for the state's historically Black colleges and universities to collaborate and implement potentially life-saving strategies. Institutions worked with Project Commit to Prevent to arm young adults with information about safer sex options and advance the mission of the North Carolina Division of Public Health.

"We needed to partner with organizations that already commanded respect in their communities to work with those communities," she says about the importance of the state's HBCUs. "Our primary mission is education--we need them to help us."

With very little money, the state's historically Black universities have been able to step up their efforts towards HIV/AIDS education and prevention. Each institution was awarded $15,000 from the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services in 2003 to apply towards their endeavors, including campus-based HIV and sexually transmitted disease (STD) testing and counseling. Two years later, the impact of the initiative is apparent in various manifestations on HBCU campuses across the state.

BREAKING THROUGH FEAR

Johnson C. Smith University in Charlotte parlayed their participation and partnership with Project Commit to Prevent into what has now become a graduation requirement for their students. All incoming first-year students at the university must take "HIV 101" as part of freshman orientation.

"HIV 101 is an hour-long seminar," says Maya Gibbons, JCSU director of counseling and testing services. Gibbons and Dr. Karen Butler, JCSU chair of health and human performance and the school's liaison for the Commit to Prevent partnership, promote HIV/AIDS education on campus. Gibbons says the seminar became mandatory during freshman orientation at the insistence of JCSU orientation organizer, Dr. Gayle Summerskill. "Dr. Summerskill made it mandatory that all freshmen have to take HIV 101. We reached 400 students in the first two semesters it was offered," Gibbons says.

During the seminar, students participate in hands-on, interactive activities that make the effect of HIV/AIDS upon communities glaringly apparent. The seminar is taught by Sonji Pass from Charlotte's Metrolina AIDS Project, a community-based organization.

"We have students exchange cards of different colors with every other student in the room," Pass explains. "Each color represents a behavior. Pink is unprotected sex, blue is contaminated needles, green is safer sex and yellow is kissing and hugging." Students' signatures are required on the cards and one student in the room is pre-identified as HIV positive to dramatize what happens when HIV is present but undetected.