Maisha Parnell, MPH, MSN and Nina Harawa, PhD, MPHMay 14, 2020
The emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic harkens back to another pandemic that began with the movement of a virus from animal into human populations and is still very much with us – HIV/AIDS. Like COVID-19, HIV affects Black populations at increased rates for reasons related to racism, segregation, and poverty, presenting a serious ongoing threat to our health. However, it is critical that COVID-19 does not distract us completely from efforts to end the HIV epidemic once and for all – a goal that many believe is in sight. HIV.gov provides the specific metric for reaching this goal, “to reduce the number of new HIV infections, in the United States, by 75 percent within five years, and then by at least 90 percent within 10 years.”