By Peggy O'Farrell
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Harris

Mamie Harris needed a mission after she retired from the Cincinnati Veterans Administration Medical Center.

A deadly virus gave her one: Harris, and her husband, Michael, established an HIV/AIDS outreach ministry to offer testing and prevention education to men and women who, because they are at risk for the virus, might feel alienated by their religious community.

The ministry is operated through the church Michael Harris pastors, Emmanuel's New Mount Zion Christian Center in College Hill.

"There is such a passion in my heart to bridge the gap between the church and HIV patients," Mamie Harris says.

Now, Harris carries out testing and provides abstinence-based prevention counseling in homeless shelters, treatment centers and some jails. Blacks comprise more than half of the new HIV cases diagnosed every year.

Many in the black community still think of AIDS as a gay white man's disease that doesn't affect them, Mamie Harris says.

She says such thinking has to change.

"I guess we have to remove some of the stigma that goes with it," she says. "We have to stop thinking of it as a homosexual disease. I think if we remove some of those concepts, the African-American community will embrace the idea that education (and) testing are necessary. It's our problem, and it's going to have to be our solution."

Her words echo the motto of the African-American HIV University, the Los Angeles-based organization that gave Harris a two-year fellowship.

After they graduate, fellows will work with HIV-positive men and women to help them understand and adhere to their treatment regimens.

More knowledge translates to less fear and lowered transmission of the virus, says Antonne Moore, program director and dean of the African-American HIV University.

Experts cite several factors for HIV's spread in the black community:

• The stigma attached to homosexual behavior leads some black men to live "on the down low," or to deny their sexual contacts with other men, making it more likely they'll spread the virus to women through unprotected sex.

• Lack of education or misinformation on how the disease is spread.

• The introduction of crack cocaine into the black community increased needle sharing and trading sex for drugs.

• Distrust of the medical community makes some blacks reluctant to be tested, fearing they'll be secretly infected with the virus or given medication.

• For those hardest hit by poverty or other issues, the belief that HIV isn't a priority because other concerns - violence, food and shelter, drugs or alcohol - are more pressing.

One of Harris' goals is to encourage more African-Americans to participate in research for an AIDS vaccine or HIV suppression drugs.

"If only white men are involved in the research, how do we know if the drugs are going to be effective for African-American females and African-American males?" she asks. "Since we are the larger number of people infected, we need to be more involved."