AIDS - Health News in the Black Community

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Author/Journalist Tina A. Brown Celebrates National Black Aids Awareness Day With Her Readers

"Crooked Road Straight: The Awakening of AIDS Activist Linda Jordan" Puts Human Face on AIDS Epidemic

Author Continues National Dialogue about AIDS in the Black Community and its Links to Poverty, Addiction and Abuse

 

Bookcover

Author - Tina A. Brown

 

Savannah, GA (BlackNews.com 2/6/09) - Crooked Road Straight: The Awakening of AIDS Activist Linda Jordan is a phenomenal and personal journey of how Linda Carole Jordan, a woman whose life was a struggle just to survive, became a messenger of hope for families coping with AIDS. The book also shows how the HIV virus is tied to social issues in urban America.

Linda emerged in the 1990s as an advocate who believed that people like her, those who lived day by day with the AIDS pandemic, were under-represented in the nation's public health prevention campaigns. This book takes the reader down the path taken by Linda, a second-generation welfare recipient and a recovering heroin addict, over five harrowing decades in Hartford, Conn., one of America's poorest cities.

Based upon 12 years of interviews by award-winning reporter Tina A. Brown, the book is a riveting narrative of Linda's colorful yet troubled life. This work of literary non-fiction is written with the immediacy of a novel. It weaves together stories told by Linda and her family; the author's detailed observations; and documents about Linda and her family provided by the Connecticut Department of Children and Families.

Crooked Road Straight puts a human face to the statistics of a community that continues to cope with the AIDS virus in secrecy. African-American women like Linda accounted for 67 percent of the estimated AIDS cases in 2004, but only 13 percent of the female population in the U.S., according to The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation.

More than half of the more than one million Americans estimated to be living with HIV in the United States are African Americans. HIV/AIDS disproportionately affects the Black community in 2006, which makes up 13 percent of the population. In 2006, Blacks accounted for 45 percent of all new infections. Infection rates among Blacks are seven times as high as for whites -- 83.7 per 100,000 verses 11.5 per 100,000, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Infection rates for Blacks are three times higher than Hispanics, which account for 29.3 per 100,000, another community disproportionately affected.

TAB Brown Publishing invites those committed to HIV/AIDS prevention to read and share an electronic version of the Prologue and Chapter One of Crooked Road Straight: The Awakening of AIDS Activist Linda Jordan on its website www.crookedroadstraight.com

Readers are encouraged through Internet advertising, blogs, radio and newspaper announcements to read it and to share their thoughts about the book with their peers online. This campaign is geared toward raising awareness about the spread of the HIV/AIDS virus in the United States.

TAB Brown Publishing hopes to attract the attention of social workers, counselors, HIV/AIDS and substance abuse providers, book clubs, students and the general public. Customers are invited to purchase books directly from national and independent bookstores and online retailers. The book is distributed by the Independent Publishers Group and Chicago Press Review.

Linda's recovery began in 1989 after she threatened suicide on the steps of the Blue Hills Treatment Center in Hartford. She was homeless, HIV positive and had lost custody of her three youngest daughters to foster care.

Rather than be defeated, Linda found God and reversed the course of her life. She recovered from her addiction, regained custody of her children and lived for 21 years without medication.

In 1994, Linda was one of the first African-American women in the U.S. to pose for AIDS prevention posters with her husband and her children. Nearly 20,000AIDS prevention posters and billboards produced by the Concerned Citizens for Humanity, a non-profit organization in Hartford, continue to circulate around the globe. Linda overcame unbearable trials and became a pioneering force in the AIDS community

Journalist/Author Tina A. Brown is available for media interviews and speaking engagements. Review this book and schedule interviews today.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Award-winning journalist Tina A. Brown is a former staff writer at The Hartford (Conn.) Courant specializing in crime and justice issues. Her journalism career began in 1984 at The Macon (Ga.) Telegraph. She has also worked a staff writer at The Cape Cod (Mass.) Times and The Asbury Park (NJ) Press. Throughout her career, Tina covered politics and education, ultimately becoming best known for her crime stories and tales of poor people battling social issues. Most specifically, she's covered street violence, gangs, criminal courts and various trends linked to urban poverty.

Born in Cleveland, Ohio, Tina relocated to Savannah, Ga., in the fall 2008. She is a graduate of Southern A&M University in Baton Rouge, La., with a bachelor's degree in journalism. She has earned other journalism certificates from the Maynard Institute's Summer Program for Minority Journalists at the University of California at Berkeley; The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation short course on public health in 1995; and The Western Knight Fellowship in 2001 for "Covering the Police in Times of Crisis" at the University of Southern California.

Tina relocated to Savannah, Ga. in December 2008. She is working as a freelance writer.

(February 1, 2006 - The Black AIDS Institute). President Bush once again pledged bold action last night to stop the HIV/AIDS epidemic in America, citing the disproportionate impact among African Americans in particular. The Institute applauds that pledge. Unfortunately, this is not the first time we’ve heard it -- and we’re sadly still waiting for the administration to act in a way that is congruent with its words.

Since the debacle of the 2004 vice presidential debates – in which Vice President Cheney acknowledged ignorance of the epidemic’s intensity among Black women – the White House has become adept at mouthing the rhetoric of the struggle against AIDS. But the gap between those words and its actions has grown so large that what once sounded “hopeful” now carries the sting of mockery.

Last night, President Bush declared, “A hopeful society acts boldly to fight diseases like HIV/AIDS, which can be prevented and treated and defeated.” These words echoed those he delivered in his 2005 State of the Union and that he repeated on World AIDS Day in December. But the administration continues to advocate policies that will produce just the opposite result.

The White House’s budget proposal last year – which shaped the budget now awaiting final congressional approval – cut funding for the HIV prevention work of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention by $4.5 million. And it flat-lined almost every aspect of the Ryan White CARE Act for a third-straight year.

Meanwhile, the administration spent the last congressional session shoving its proposal to gut Medicaid through Congress. The budget Congress is now poised to approve would shift the program’s growing cost onto the backs of the poor families it was designed to help in the first place.

At the White House’s insistence, the bill will allow states to charge co-pays that may reach as high as hundreds of dollars for some. The Congressional Budget Office has said this cynical step would not save money through people actually paying the co- pays but rather by discouraging them from using Medicaid at all. Medicaid is the nation’s largest payer for AIDS treatment, and two-thirds of Blacks getting AIDS care pay for it with public health insurance.

In the coming days, the White House will submit its next budget proposal. Perhaps it will reflect the ideals of the “hopeful society” the President described. But given the goals outlined in the rest of his speech, we won’t hold our breath.

Even as President Bush called for renewed efforts to stop new infections, he championed unproven abstinence education as a strategy for promoting sexual health. The President was correct to note the steady improvements we have seen in sexual health among young people; but he was either uninformed or deliberately misleading when he attributed those advancements to abstinence promotion.

The CDC has clearly stated that research suggests the improving trends found in its national surveys on youth risk-behavior are an outgrowth of comprehensive sex education. No credible research exists showing abstinence-only sex education to work – indeed, some suggests that it makes matters worse, because those young people who do eventually have sex don’t know how to do so safely.

Parents overwhelmingly agree with this commonsense: Nearly half of those surveyed in a 2004 Kaiser Family Foundation/Harvard/NPR poll said they wanted kids to learn about both delaying sex and protecting themselves.

Yet, the administration continues to ignore the urgings of both scientists and parents in its reckless effort to make schools bend to its unfounded beliefs. So while the White House has pushed cuts to the CDC’s proven prevention work with one hand, with the other it has more than doubled the annual budget for abstinence-only education since 2001.

Similarly, while President Bush said last night that AIDS can be “treated and defeated,” in the same speech he repeatedly vowed to continue taking apart the very same safety-net programs (or, “entitlement spending”) that poor people with HIV/AIDS depend upon to get and stay healthy. He also urged Congress to entrench the reckless tax cuts that have left government unable to adequately fund these long-standing, crucial initiatives.

“Tonight, the state of our Union is strong,” the President insisted. But whether it be AIDS in particular, health care in general or our well-being more broadly, far too many Americans are left wondering which Union the President is talking about. His administration’s actions have consistently betrayed the callousness hiding behind its professed compassion. Merely asserting otherwise with “hopeful” words in high-profile speeches doesn’t alter that reality.

Learn More at BlackAIDS.org

(1/31/06 - Black AIDS Institute). The Black AIDS Institute family joins our community and the world today in mourning the loss of civil rights pioneer Coretta Scott King.

In her life, Mrs. King contributed to her community through countless roles, from fearless trailblazer in the global human rights struggle to widow, mother and bedrock for a family that has sacrificed so much in the name of justice. In the years since Dr. King’s passing, she has continued to carry forth and build upon his mission of creating a truly just society.

Mrs. King boldly framed our fight against the forces that fuel the AIDS epidemic as part of that mission. That is why she was among the first Heroes in the Struggle the Institute honored. She contributed her voice to our campaigns time and again – and to countless other efforts to help Black America save itself from this scourge.

Whether it was poverty or homophobia, Mrs. King bravely urged us to open our arms and hearts so that we may truly be our brothers’ and sisters’ keepers. “AIDS is a global crisis, a national crisis, a local crisis and a human crisis,” she told the Southern Christian Leadership Conference during an August 2001 address marking 20 years of the epidemic. “No matter where you live, AIDS is one of the most deadly killers of African Americans. And I think anyone who sincerely cares about the future of Black America had better be speaking out.”

That address was one of many times in which Dr. King spoke eloquently about the movement to end this epidemic, and its place in Black America’s struggle for justice and equality. Her voice, her leadership, her compassion and her commitment will be sorely missed. But her legacy will live on in all of our individual commitments to building a secure future for our community.

Learn More at BlackAIDS.org

Highlights from Last Issue . . .

United Nations - (4/30/04) A unique partnership combining medicines, philanthropic support, medical expertise, and other resources with on-the-ground community support is showing signs of progress in battling the HIV/AIDS pandemic in hard-hit Uganda, according to a presentation at the InfoPoverty World Conference at the United Nations today.

The new Infectious Disease Institute at Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda is a novel collaboration between Pfizer, the Academic Alliance for AIDS Care and Prevention, Pangea, the Infectious Diseases Society of America, The AIDS Support Organization of Uganda, and other local and international organizations.

While a new clinic building is under construction, the program is already providing regular care to 3,000 HIV-infected patients. The Institute will be the first new large-size facility built at the Makerere University medical school in 30 years and will be able to support the care of 50,000 persons with HIV/AIDS per year. The program's training component has trained nearly 200 physicians from 10 countries in sub-Saharan Africa to date, and plans to increase that number to 200 per year.

"The overall number of people trained is designed to increase exponentially, as these doctors will help educate new physicians across Africa," said Robert L. Mallett, Pfizer senior vice president, in a presentation at the U.N.'s InfoPoverty World Conference. "The driver of the success of this program has been building effective partnerships. That will be how we make headway in other countries hard hit by the AIDS pandemic."

Pfizer and the Pfizer Foundation provided start up funding of nearly $14 million over three years. Pfizer is contributing a wide range of resources including engineering and computer support, global manufacturing support, legal services, assistance from Pfizer employees, and donations of the company's antifungal medicine Diflucan, used to treat opportunistic infections related to AIDS.

"The combination of activities and partners is helping to fill a critical need," Mallett said. He points to the lack of doctors in a range of countries now targeted for similar Pfizer partnerships. In Mozambique, for example, there is only one doctor for every 50,000 patients.

The program has yielded important side benefits such as the transfer of medical technology, the creation of new jobs and added health infrastructure. The increased availability of state-of-the-art medical equipment and other positive results have been extremely encouraging.

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