This submit was initially revealed on Atlanta Voice
By Dyana Bagby
In 2002, Freda Jones owned a hair salon, drove her dream Cadillac, and was the proud mom of 4 kids. She was dwelling the life she had imagined as somewhat woman rising up on Atlanta’s Westside.
“I used to be 32 and had completed every little thing I wished,” she stated. “I had survived a troublesome neighborhood.”
That June, her long-term associate caught pneumonia. Jones stated she felt her spirit telling her to get an HIV check. Two weeks later, she acquired her HIV analysis from a nurse at Grady Hospital. The life she labored so exhausting for was over, she remembered considering.
“I believed, ‘Oh, my god. I’m going to die. Who’s going to care for my children?” stated Jones, now 56. “I believed I used to be grown as a result of I used to be a mother and was making a living, however now I say I didn’t develop up till I came upon my analysis.”
Jones began therapy on the Fulton County Well being Division, the place she attended assist teams for individuals dwelling with HIV. She additionally began volunteering on the well being division. She discovered a brand new function as an HIV educator.
However Jones noticed a big lack of illustration of Black, wholesome cisgender ladies like herself in group assist teams. So, in 2018, she based LOTUS. Named after the flower that rises from muddy waters, the personal, peer-led assist group symbolizes ladies’s resilience and transformation, she stated.
Right this moment, LOTUS boasts over 300 members in Atlanta, Georgia, and nationwide. The group meets twice a month by way of Zoom and hosts social gatherings from Easter egg hunts to Christmas events.
By way of photograph shoots and group displays, LOTUS supplies a protected house for ladies to “share experiences, challenges, and triumphs whereas constructing group and resilience,” Jones stated.
“Our mission is to develop ladies to succeed in their full potential by assist and advocacy by empowering them,” she stated. “When ladies see others thriving and surviving, they maintain their heads greater.”
In 2021, the 20-county metro Atlanta space had the third-highest charge of recent HIV diagnoses amongst U.S. metro areas, with 74% of that quantity amongst Black individuals. One in two Black males in metro Atlanta — 50% — is in danger for HIV, stated Jeff Cheek, director of the Fulton County Division of HIV Elimination.
The slashing of federal funding for HIV prevention and analysis by President Donald Trump is barely going to result in worse numbers and a steeper climb in HIV charges in Atlanta, he predicted. He stated this could possibly be a return to the onset of the epidemic, when it was the group — not organizations — that fashioned assist networks and fought for therapy.
“I feel throughout this time of turmoil, dealing with funding cuts for HIV and particularly on the prevention aspect, calls the group again to the early days of the epidemic, within the Eighties, after we fought for funding, and we’re going to do it once more,” Cheek stated.
“These teams had been began by individuals locally as a result of they weren’t getting any assist wherever else, and so people with HIV had been beginning these peer assist teams,” Cheek stated.
Leisha McKinley-Seaside, founding father of the Black Public Well being Academy and a long-time HIV activist, has witnessed the evolution of those teams.
“Peer assist teams must retool to stay related in how they assist individuals dwelling with HIV on this present day and time,” she stated, pointing to digital teams like LOTUS as progressive fashions that increase entry.
Quite a few research present peer assist and community-led assist networks could be efficient in decreasing stigma for individuals dwelling with HIV and in addition bettering therapy adherence, however extra analysis is required.
A 2024 research, “Ending the HIV Epidemic in Metropolitan Atlanta,” has many strategies, however ended with a stern message: “Given the lasting results of segregation and chronic structural racism, group empowerment should type the muse of the Atlanta HIV/AIDS response.”
Dr. Daniel Driffin is the co-founder of THRIVE Assist Providers (SS), which supplies sources for Black homosexual males dwelling with HIV. He’s additionally an organizer of the brand new planning coalition in search of group enter on methods to finish the HIV epidemic.
Peer assist teams “bridge vital gaps in HIV care,” he stated.
“Black and brown individuals nonetheless are unequally impacted by HIV. We see roughly two out of three new diagnoses are amongst Black and brown individuals,” he stated. “Peer networks can stand within the hole… particularly for the reason that majority of individuals offering take care of individuals dwelling with HIV are north of I-20.”
These assist teams additionally present sources in the case of remedy and slowing transmission.
“Networks help within the course of of constructing laboratory outcomes make sense,” Driffin stated. “Extra occasions than not, chances are you’ll get quarter-hour along with your medical supplier, and also you consider all of the questions as soon as your supplier walks out. Having a community of individuals dwelling with HIV that you just’re related to, you possibly can drop these sorts of questions into the community.”
Cody Henry, program supervisor at THRIVE SS, when individuals with shared experiences come collectively, they not solely discover consolation but in addition discover a basis.
“When our group is educated about HIV standing, the significance of testing, understanding remedy, recognizing that undetectable equals untransmittable… these are conversations which are current throughout peer assist teams,” Henry stated.
“The peer assist group presents a fantastic mechanism to decrease transmission charges.”
The submit Peer assist teams bridge vital gaps in HIV care appeared first on The Atlanta Voice.
