I have been living with HIV for more than 35 years. Every night I take three pills that keep me healthy and keep me alive. And you know what? I look at those pills every night and there’s one thing that I notice: Not one of them has a way to get into my body without my assistance. What the pills do is biomedical; what I
do is behavioral. Ending the AIDS epidemic is going to require integrating the behavioral and the biomedical, as biomedical interventions alone will not get the job done.
The Black AIDS Institute, which I head as president and CEO, is calling on a national movement to increase the HIV science and treatment knowledge in the HIV/AIDS workforce and in those communities most at risk of HIV infection. I firmly believe that we can eradicate AIDS in our lifetime if we take three critical steps to help better prepare non-medical HIV/AIDS workers for major tasks ahead.
First, we have to establish a concise list of core competencies for people working with HIV. Meaning, we need to have a uniform rule for what all social workers, case managers and volunteers working in HIV/AIDS treatment and prevention centers should know about the latest tools and trends of HIV/AIDS. Currently there are none.
Secondly, we must establish a certification process for HIV/AIDS workers. I mean, barbers and beauticians have to get licensed in order to officially provide their services; why not non-medical staff who work in HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment? This naturally would also require continuing education for all people working in the HIV/AIDS field.
Lastly, the BAI is calling for a dramatic increase in the number of people living with HIV/AIDS to be employed at every echelon of the HIV/AIDS workforce, from entry-level staffers to senior managers and directors.
I have great hope that these critical steps will have a major impact in ending AIDS once and for all, because I and a group of other top researchers spent the past three years examining and compiling a first-of-its-kind research project that looked into the knowledge, skills and attitudes of non-medical HIV/AIDS workers across the United States. The results of the study are shocking. The more-than 3,600 respondents from 48 states, Washington, D.C., and U.S. territories who participated in the study answered only 63 percent of the questions correctly. If this were an academic exam, they would have earned a “D”. Said another way, our nation’s case managers, social workers, prevention educators, testers and counselors, public-health workers and advocates, policymakers, contractors, volunteers and others working to end the AIDS epidemic are woefully unprepared to implement the new biomedical tools touted as the key to ending the AIDS epidemic in America.
There have been a number of remarkable biomedical breakthroughs in the treatment and prevention of HIV/AIDS in the last few years. We have better surveillance tools, better diagnostic tools, better treatment tools and better prevention tools. We have the tools we need to end the epidemic in America. The scientific evidence is now clear. Or is it?
All the biomedical and scientific breakthroughs in the world aren’t worth anything if people working in the HIV field don’t understand them, believe in them and know how to use them. We are leaving our most valuable resource behind. We have a large infrastructure of passionate, committed and capable people working in AIDS service organizations, community-based organizations, clinical settings and health departments ready to get the job done. But they can’t do it unless they have the familiarity, knowledge and skills needed to use these new tools.
We need an educated AIDS workforce to help people like me understand why HIV/AIDS treatment is important and to help us stay on treatment when the going gets rough. Doctors can’t really do that in the 15 minutes they have with a patient. And to exacerbate the problem, increasingly, people with HIV/AIDS are going to receive their HIV care from doctors who aren’t HIV specialists. People in the communities most affected are needed to deliver that kind of message.
It is for this reason we are promoting the social media hashtag #KnowBetterDoBetter. It is inspired by the late Dr. Maya Angelou’s words and it is forged out of an urgent sense of hope because “when we know better, we do better.”
You can join the movement to eradicate AIDS once and for all by using the hashtag #KnowBetterDoBetter on social-media platforms to demand that local, state, national officials and policymakers fund and establish national initiatives to increase HIV science and treatment literacy among the non-medical HIV/AIDS workforce.
We are calling for:
• Establishment of a nationwide certification program for the HIV/AIDS workforce.
• Requirement that HIV/AIDS workers pursue continuing education on HIV science and treatment issues.
• Dramatic increase in the number of people living with HIV/AIDS in the HIV/AIDS workforce.
You can download and read the “When We Know Better, We Do Better: State of HIV/AIDS Science and Treatment Literacy” report and survey produced by the Black AIDS Institute in partnership with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Latino Commission on AIDS, the National Association of State and Territorial AIDS Directors, Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health and Janssen Therapeutics, Division of Janssen Products, LP, at: www.blackaids.org/reports/when-we-know-better-we-do-better.
Phill Wilson is president and CEO of the Black AIDS Institute. For more information, visit blackaids.org.