AIDS Advocacy Groups

Here's a list of links to several AIDS advocacy groups in Florida for those that want more information on AIDS and what is being done concerning the disease:

http://www.amfar.org/cgi-bin/iowa/index.html - amFAR

http://www.nmac.org/home/ - National Minority AIDS Council

http://www.c2ea.org/ - Campaign To End AIDS

http://www.theaidsinstitute.org/home.asp - The Aids Institute

http://www.avac.org/ - AVAC

One Church and The AIDS Epidemic

The AIDS pandemic is one problem that many Christian churches have ignored since the outbreak of the disease in the 1980s; the illness was viewed as a problem of the gay community and thus not of concern for the church. However, one church’s ministry in Overtown still continues to reach out to its suffering community 18 years after it was founded.

Greater Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church is one of the oldest Black congregations in Miami and its AIDS program is also one of the oldest in the city.

Greater Bethel established its AIDS outreach program in 1990 after members saw how the disease was affecting their neighborhood.

Overtown had the highest rate of AIDS infected people in Florida, said Terrance Cribbs-Lorrant, education and prevention specialist and program director for the AIDS ministry.

“The church also had the resources … the physical and the financial. So that was probably part of the reason they started this ministry,” he said.

John F. White, the church’s reverend, started the initiative. It was the first religious response to the AIDS problem in the black community of Miami, said Cribbs-Lorrant.

According to the Miami New Times, the program also included a “twice-monthly religious service for gays and lesbians and their families that they called the Ministry of Reconciliation.” But that part of the program was eliminated by White. This aspect of the problem was instituted in 2000 and removed in 2001.

As part of the program, church members formed a street team that goes out on weekend nights, from 11 p.m. to 3 a.m., and reaches out to club goers. They preach their message at heterosexual nightclubs as well as same-sex clubs.

Cribbs-Lorrant tells of one time where the street team encountered a drug dealer in Opa Locka. The dealer was selling to his clientele, when the street team approached him. After seeing them handing out condoms and talking to the people in the area, the dealer began to urge his clientele to get tested or he would start withholding his “supplies.”

“It was really weird [to hear this man giving the same message we were],” he said. “He actually told his people to get tested before they would get more supplies.”

Despite the fact that they are handing out condoms, the members of Greater Bethel believe in abstinence. They, however, claim to understand that abstinence-only teachings don’t work.

“You have to be realistic,” he said. “[We have to] keep people alive long enough to save them.”

Because abstinence only teaching doesn’t work in the real world, the street team hands out condoms and encourages safe sex. People are going to have sex regardless of what’s out there, said Cribbs-Lorrant. In fact the church does not support abstinence-only teaching, but it is still a part of their message.

People need to know about AIDS and sexually transmitted diseases even if they practice abstinence, said Cribbs-Lorrant.

Bucking the tradition of having a completely separate AIDS program, Greater Bethel has actually included the AIDS ministry as part of their general service. Sermons on AIDS and why congregants should help people that are suffering from the disease are common.

Greater Bethel is also part of The Black Church Week of Prayer for the Healing of Aids. During the weeks of March 2, several institutions will hold prayer services specifically for those who need healing. The church believes that the power of prayer can heal, but they still act to aide others. They act in order to prevent the spread of AIDS and pray to heal those that already are suffering from the disease.

Greater Bethel work closely with other organizations that are fighting against AIDS.

The church is partners with Care Resource, which does the testing for HIV and provides medical services that the church cannot. The church hosts testing on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but they are not planning to expand this aspect of their program.

“We are right near Jackson [Memorial Hospital], and Camillus House is right around the corner. We don’t want to take anything away from them. I think our work supplements theirs,” Cribs-Lorrant said.

However, they keep an updated database of treatment centers, support groups and other testing sites in the area to refer people to the appropriate place to get care.

“We once had a girl who had been out of care for three years. She hadn’t received treatment or medicine for those three years. So we got her back into a treatment program [outside of the church],” he said.

The program also includes a service they call “Churches Taking a Stand.” The church takes it upon itself to help other religious institutions learn about AIDS and how to become testing sites.

“Feed and Forum” is another service they provide as part of their ministry. The purpose is to get the homeless and needy to gather and learn about AIDS. People who attend this event, which is held once a month, receive testing, information on AIDS and other sexually transmitted infections and a warm meal.

“You have to feed people to get them to come,” Cribbs-Lorrant said. “This way they eat and they listen to our [church leaders] talk about AIDS.”

Greater Bethel’s AIDS ministry was also part of the “Ride the Bus…” initiative started by the Miami-Dade County Health Department. Members from the ministry and Miami-Dade health officials rode the public buses and handed out “Ride the Bus…” bags filled with condoms, lubrication and cards with HIV testing site information.

They offer other services and events such as pastoral counseling, and HIV/AIDS information courses.

The ministry seems successful especially when compared to other churches in Miami-Dade, which have ended their AIDS ministries because of lack of funds or because the churches themselves have closed.

AIDS Coverage In South Florida is Lacking

AIDS in South Florida is an issue that I hadn’t even thought about until today. That’s when it hit me that I’ve rarely read anything in the local paper on AIDS; I’ve never seen the local TV stations cover anything of the sort. Yet, when I decided to do some more research on this issue I ran into several articles from the Miami Herald and the Sun Sentinel, I wondered if these articles were shoved to the back of the paper because I had to actually want to find the coverage to even come across it. Shouldn’t an issue this big be something that is more accessible?

In a Dec. 27 2007 article, the Miami Herald reported that the National Institutes of Health have given the University of Miami and Florida International University federal grants to research the AIDS issue. The article also mentions that South Florida has the fastest growing rate for new AIDS cases. And yet, it still doesn’t warrant more extensive coverage apparently.

Florida has one of the highest HIV/AIDS rate in the nation according to the Center for Disease Control, and yet the reporting here is sparse to say the least. As a challenge, do a search for HIV on the Herald’s website on any given day. More likely than not you’ll come up with few results focusing on what’s happening in South Florida; try not to search for AIDS because you’ll come up with some complete irrelevant articles.

Those who follow the news in South Florida might very well feel like the problem doesn’t affect them or their community. That’s how I felt. It never once crossed my mind that AIDS is an issue in South Florida. I knew it was there but that’s about it. I would be lucky if I stumbled upon a story concerning the issue.

Yes, there is global coverage of AIDS, but local coverage is lacking. Perhaps some editors think that people aren’t interested, or that it will turn people away from their publication. It probably will, but it still needs to be reported. Now this isn’t to say that all the news has to be bad. If an organization is making strides in relief for AIDS sufferers then that’s a story.

The Herald article later devolves into opinions and that’s fine for an op-ed piece but what I gathered from it was that the experts, who aren’t named for some reason, say that Latinos are the reason why the AIDS rate is so high in South Florida. If a big chunk of the population is Latino then they will report HIV or AIDS in higher numbers for the region. I don’t denounce the efforts to target different ethnic with different strategies of AIDS prevention, but make that the point of the story.

AIDS coverage could be done better. The average reader doesn’t read every part of the paper and the average television viewer does other things while watching the evening news, so writing a few articles and shoving them to the back pages or the last minutes of a news broadcast is unfair, and it creates a mindset for readers and viewers that this issue is unimportant.