The AIDS Foundation of Chicago ( AFC ) launched "With Me Comes a Cure," a public awareness campaign designed to combat the spread of HIV infection in the African-American community, on Feb. 7. Although Black people make up 15 percent of the population of Illinois, 51 percent of new HIV diagnoses come from the African-American community. Particularly hard hit are Black men who have sex with men ( MSM ) — indeed, one of the few populations experiencing an increase in new infections in an overall context of decline.
According to Jim Pickett, AFC's advocacy director, public-health efforts to test for HIV have ignored the needs of specific communities at high risk of infection—communities that include African Americans, MSM of all races, sex workers and injection-drug users.
With "limited resources," Pickett said, efforts are needed to address potentially risky behaviors, such as anal sex, that government agencies are generally unwilling to consider addressing in detail. Citing "structural homophobia" as prohibitive, Pickett added that health agencies "do work that doesn't speak directly to gay men. Resources should be directed to the populations that need them," rather than those that are "politically palatable."
The AFC's "With Me Comes a Cure" campaign is designed as just such a new direction.
"It's not enough to talk about HIV prevention in isolation," said AFC Communications Director Johnathon Briggs, stressing that such talk needs to be explicitly concerned with those groups that have the "greatest need for intervention." Briggs began working on the campaign in August 2008, with help from a grant from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases ( NIAID ) HIV Vaccine Research and Education Initiative. Not limited to simply inciting discussion on HIV within African-American communities, the AFC's goal for the campaign is more ambitious— indeed, a redefinition of the concept "cure" itself.
"Any preventative action you take is in essence a cure," Briggs said. "The cure is what you're doing right now to prevent infection." The campaign, he stated, is meant to demonstrate to people that "they have power to actually be a part of the cure."
Centered around the Web site www.withmecomesacure.org, the campaign asks community members to imagine what words or ideas to insert in the title in place of the word "me." With what, then, comes a cure? Some words that have been input into the Web site that have been conceptual become concrete: Dance. Unity. Writing. Islam. Playing the cello. Science. Community members are encouraged to identify ways that their input can lead to action around HIV infection—how dance, for instance, can communicate a message of prevention.
"Everyone has a talent, a passion, or a resource" that can help prevent HIV, Briggs said.
Based on a concept created pro bono by Chicago Creative Partnership, "Cure" was developed through the input of three focus groups—made up of Black women, Black MSM and Black youths from throughout the city— held late last year. All three were vital, said Briggs: While the group of women was intrigued by the ambiguity and potential of the campaign's concept, the youths were most engaged in thinking about cultural activism and HIV.
One plan developed by the youth group, said Briggs, is for a video emphasizing condom use based on the Young Jeezy song "I Put On for My City."
While the NIAID grant funded CTA ads and "Cure" paraphernalia such as T-shirts, compact mirrors and condom cases, the year-long campaign will include a number of public events, including a mural painting in May on the city's West Side—all designed to emphasize prevention, frequent testing and enrollment in clinical trials.
One area of the campaign focuses on connecting affected communities, especially communities of color, with the kinds of healthcare they might not otherwise be exposed to. Epidemiologist Yaa Simpson, whose organization, the Association of Clinical Trials Services, is working with AFC on "Cure," says that her goal is to "bring the science to the people. Curing people is everybody's business. HIV is everybody's business. No scientist or researcher has ever cured anything without people."
The open-ended nature of "Cure," Briggs said, offers a way to think of "HIV as a proxy for other kinds of social inequality": how communities affected disproportionately by HIV are also communities affected by poverty, high incarceration rates,and lack of access to education and social services. The deliberate vagueness of the title—with the words "HIV" or "AIDS" not readily apparent—give participants the opportunity to think creatively about the larger structural problems they face.
Recalling the words of one focus group member last year, Briggs said, "Sometimes you have to take out the word to get out the word."
