By George E. Curry

On Tuesday, President Obama issued a report outlining the federal government’s first national HIV/AIDS strategy plan. The plan calls for reducing the HIV infection rate by 25 percent within five years. But AIDS activists worry that the alarming infection rates among African Americans will not be reduced without additional federal spending, better federal coordination and a willingness of people to avoid risky sexual behavior.

In addition to setting a target of reducing HIV infections by 25 percent, the plan seeks to increase the proportion of people who know their HIV status from 79 percent to 90 percent by 2015. It also lists specific steps federal agencies should take to meet the new goals.

“For the first time, we finally have a national plan in place to guide our fight against the epidemic and to hold decision-makers accountable for results,” Phill Wilson, president and CEO of the Black AIDS Institute, said in a statement. “America has long required countries that receive foreign AIDS assistance to have a national strategy, but we have never had one.”

The plan released by the Obama administration, which was 15 months in the making and was shaped with imput from grassroots organizations and town hall meetings, listed three primary goals: 1) reducing the number of people who become infected with HIV, 2) increasing access to care and improving the lives of those with HIV, and 3) reducing HIV-related health disparities.

Blacks, perhaps more than any other group, will be directly impacted by how well the new strategy is implemented. Although the number of HIV infections among blacks has declined since the late 1980s, when they comprised 25 percent of Americans with HIV/AIDS, the racial skew has sharpened. The CDC reports that blacks now account for 49 percent – or about 500,000 –of the 1.1 million Americans living with HIV/AIDS.

According to Centers for Disease Control (CDC):

Although African Americans represent nearly 13 percent of the U.S. population, blacks are 46 percent of all people living with HIV and 45 percent of all new HIV infections;

Black women account for 66 percent of all new HIV cases among women, compared to 17 percent for white women and 15 percent for Latina;

Although African-American teenagers represent only 15 percent of U.S. teens, they account for 68 percent of all new AIDS cases among teens;

Gay and bisexual black men are much more likely to be infected than their white counterparts. According to a study conducted in five major cities, 46 percent of black gay and bisexual black men had contracted HIV, compared to 21 percent of whites and 17 percent of gay and bisexual Latino men.

“If the new AIDS strategy is to succeed, it has to work for black people,” said Wilson. “In reporting results, the Obama administration needs specifically to report outcomes for black people. Only if prevention and treatment programs work for black America will we win our national fight against AIDS.”

The vision statement of the national HIV/AIDS strategy sets an ambitious goal: “The United States will become a place where new HIV infections are rare and when they do occur, every person, regardless of age, gender, race/ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity or socio-economic circumstance, will have unfettered access to high quality, life-extending care, free from stigma and discrimination.”

To make that vision a reality, the report says there must be a concentrated effort by all sectors of society, not just the federal government, to intensify HIV prevention efforts in communities where HIV is most heavily concentrated, expand targeted efforts by using effective, evidence-based approaches and educating all Americans about the threat of HIV and how to prevent it.

“HIV infection is preventable,” the report stated. “Allowing the number of new infections to rise or remain the same imposes costs on the country, because the lifetime cost of treating HIV is estimated to be approximately $355,000 per person.”

A disproportionate number of blacks must rely on Medicaid, with 59 percent of them taking advantage of the program, compared to 32 percent of whites.

The administration’s plan doesn’t call for any new federal spending above the current $19 billion domestic total, asserting that the goals can be met through more targeted use of existing resources.

Wilson, however, criticized that approach.

“At a time when we are largely losing the fight to prevent new infections, prevention programs currently account for only 3 percent of federal AIDS spending,” he explained. “To put available prevention weapons to effective use, experts estimate that annual prevention spending needs to increase from $750 million to $1.3 billion for at least each of the next five years. This new strategy offers a sound, evidence-based approach to better results, but it will be worth little more than the paper it is written on if we don’t follow through with resources.”

George E. Curry, former editor-in-chief of Emerge magazine and the NNPA News Service, is a keynote speaker, moderator, and media coach.