March 10 is National Women & Girls HIV/AIDS Awareness Day, and we’ve been seriously misled into underestimating the impact of the disease on our communities. The statistics are staggering — Black women are 12 times more likely to be diagnosed with HIV than white women. Black women make up nearly 60% of new HIV diagnoses among women in the U.S. But when was the last time you had a conversation with your friend, your sister, your niece, your cousin, or your daughter about HIV? It seems like the last time we as a community were really paying attention to this virus was when Salt’N’Pepa rapped, “ Let’s Talk About Sex,” and TLC was wearing condoms on their clothing.
When it comes to today’s fight for health equity in Black communities, Dr. Maisha Standifer and Masonia Traylor are looking to change the narrative around HIV. As leading voices in HIV awareness, advocacy, and education, both women are using their platforms to challenge stigma, push for better healthcare access, and empower Black women to take control of their health.
BLACK ENTERPRISE joined Standifer and Traylor at the Satcher Health Leadership Institute at Morehouse School of Medicine for a candid conversation about the state of Black women’s health, the ongoing impact of HIV in our communities, and the absolute urgency of advocating for ourselves. Dr. Standifer, director for Population Health, met Traylor, a health equity task force member living with HIV, through a project funded by Gilead Sciences.
“I believe our paths were destined to cross,” Standifer says. “Through this project, we were able to be connected, and I was very fond of not just her, but her story and the upliftment and empowerment because it’s very key in terms of the visualization and the perception and narrative that is created. I’m very particular about the narrative of our young girls and young women.”
Traylor looks like any other upwardly mobile 30-something Black woman you might know and call a friend or family member. She is passionate and driven about doing the real work around educating the community, HIV prevention, treatment, and care. The founder and executive director of her own nonprofit organization, Lady Burgundy, Inc., Traylor is a graduate of Georgia State University’s Andrew Young School of Public Policy and, like Standifer, a community-based researcher. But beyond her professional credentials, Traylor has seen a lot in the 14 years since receiving her diagnosis, including watching friends die, primarily because of the cost of the medication to keep them alive.
“Let me be clear –- HIV is not a death sentence,” Traylor added. “But what is deadly is silence, shame, and misinformation. I was diagnosed with HIV at 23 as a young mother, and I had to fight through not just the physical health challenges but also the mental and emotional toll of stigma. Too many Black women are suffering in silence because we don’t have enough real, open conversations about it.
In an era where pRep and Truvada commercials air every night, it’s easy to see how the public could conclude that living with HIV these days is as simple as taking daily medication. And with terminology like “undetectable” being frequently thrown around without any real education or context to better inform people who haven’t been diagnosed, too many of our lives are being risked out of ignorance.
“The medication I take is $4,000 a month minimum without health insurance,” Traylor told BE. “The amount that it costs is $60,000 a year for me to remain alive, and that’s excluding the actual payment to the physician and the blood work that’s being done… HIV is an opportunity for a lot of people for money to be made.”
How many people are aware of the cost just to stay alive? Would sexually active people behave differently if they were aware of the price to pay? It’s clear that not enough discussions are being had about how HIV medication is being capitalized, but an even bigger concern for both Traylor and Standifer is the way HIV care is being handled in the Black community due to a lack of knowledge and cultural sensitivity.
“I’m concerned about what type of medical doctors are coming into this, not really knowing the history of HIV, but wanting to provide care for me as a person living with HIV,” Traylor said. “A lot of providers are coming into this who are new. They have compassion and empathy, but they don’t have a full grounding understanding of where we come from or where we’re going. Feeling like patients are entitled when they’re walking in for care and services, when they’re really coming in with a trauma that’s not being clinically diagnosed by mental health clinicians, legally and politically as a trauma.”
Navigating the HIV crisis in the Black community isn’t just a simple, clear-cut conversation about prevention and treatment. Both Standifer and Traylor are clear that the narrative has to change.
“What I learned is I didn’t get HIV from having condomless sex,” Traylor told Black Enterprise. “I got HIV from choosing to love Black men who do not prioritize their health. Part of being a protector and provider is not just providing financially -– it’s also making sure I can protect you from what is considered harmful in the environment. But harm is also internal, not just from another human being, but the internal pieces of that woman can potentially bring another life into the world –- and we’re not protecting that.”
For Standifer, it’s vital that the next generation of health providers get armed with the information necessary to provide both treatment and a prevention-centered curriculum that will help our youth navigate the risks posed by STIs.
“We talk about political, we talk about community, we talk about advocates, and we talk about activists, so when we’re looking along this spectrum, what needs to be prioritized?” Dr. Standifer asked. “Developing the future public health leaders and researchers who look like me and you. So what we do is optimize ourselves at Morehouse School of Medicine because we have that; we’re the trusted voice, the community. We may not get as much funding as institutions that are 30 minutes away, but we know we are always going to be here. We’ve always been here as HBCUs, and we’re always going to continue until we get it right. So what we’re doing now is creating courses for the next generation of clinicians to be there and normalize conversations -– ‘Hey, let’s talk about sexual health.”
The narrative about HIV within the Black community cannot be distilled into a one-hour conversation or even limited to one subject. It’s absolutely necessary that HIV education be prioritized at every level, from elementary-age kids to medical students. It’s vital that advocates like Dr. Maisha Standifer and Masonia Traylor are fully supported in their quest to provide access to education and treatment because HIV may no longer be a death sentence, but its consequences remain too dangerous to be ignored.
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