December 1 was World AIDS Day, and this years international theme wasTake the Rights Path: My Health, My Right! In alignment with the theme, the World Health Organization (WHO) has challenged health professionals to combat AIDS by addressing the social factors that most affect the health outcomes of people living with HIV, especially since specific populations continue to be hardest hit in the ongoing struggle against HIV/AIDS.For African Americans, the disparities within the healthcare system contribute disproportionately to the high number of HIV/AIDS, directly affecting the quality of life and its spread. Related Donald Trump had a plan to end HIV by 2030. His re-election may kill that plan. In 2019, he announced the Ending HIV Epidemic Initiative. But the GOP seems determined to gut it entirely. An August 2008 report from the Black AIDS Institute, entitled Left Behind, showed that the number of Black Americans living with HIV exceeds the HIV population in seven of the 15 focus countries in the U.S. Presidents Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) initiative, an initiative helping to save the lives of those who have HIV/AIDS in international countries like Haiti, Dominican Republic, India, and South Africa (to name a few). Dive deeper every day Join our newsletter for thought-provoking commentary that goes beyond the surface of LGBTQ+ issues Subscribe to our Newsletter today The epidemic is heavily concentrated in urban enclaves like Detroit, New York, Newark, and Washington, D.C., and sadly, these disparities affecting Black people with HIV still persist in the present day.Also, with the Souths unfortunate propensity for avoiding uncomfortable subjects, the South has evolved into one of the HIV/AIDS hot spots in the country. Prisons have become hotspots too, with rates of HIV/AIDS among Black male inmates at five times the rate of the general population in prisons, its transmitted primarily through male-to-male sex or tattooing. The complexity of HIVs perception in the Black communityPresciently, when The New York Native, a now-defunct gay newspaper, first reported on a virus found in gay men (then known as GRID: Gay-Related Immune Deficiency), its May 18, 1981 editorial noted, Even if the disease first became apparent in gay men, it is not just a gay disease.Back in the day, famous HIV-positive heterosexual African Americans like tennis great Arthur Ashe, news anchorman Max Robinson, and rapper Eazy-E all died of AIDS, and basketball giant Earvin Magic Johnson, who is still living with the virus, highlighted the fact that anyone can contract the virus. However, many still see the epidemic as a white gaydisease, suggesting being gay or having sex with someone of the same gender puts you immediately at high risk.Over time, we got toseethat some heterosexual African-American men were not honest about their sexual behavior, and the virus showed up in the women they slept with. Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, a sex scare hit the African-American heterosexual womens population due to Black men living life on the down low (or on the DL). As an underground subculture of African-American men who have sex with other men (MSM), men on the DL dont identify as gay, bisexual or queer. The feminization of this disease made many of us AIDS activists and scholars wonder if the same amount of money, concern, communication, and moral outrage that was put into white gay men with the disease would be put into curbing its spread among black women but it wasnt!There are still many persistent social and economic factors contributing to the high rates of the epidemic racism, poverty, healthcare disparity, and violence, to name just a few. We know that the epidemic moves along the fault lines of race, class, gender, and sexual orientation, and that HIV transmission is tied to specific high-risk behaviors that are not exclusive to any one sexual orientation.However, the significant barriers to ending the AIDS epidemic still today are lack of information, health disparities and access to health care, which overrides homophobia as a main cause. As a matter of fact, homophobia merely heightens the lack of information, health disparities, and access to health care that already exist.As we enter the season of Advent in the Christian calendar the days spent in preparation for the Christmas holiday my prayer is one of health equity. I pray that health professionals heal not only those suffering from the disease but also address the social determinants of health that surround it, causing more lives to be lost.Subscribe to theLGBTQ Nation newsletterand be the first to know about the latest headlines shaping LGBTQ+ communities worldwide.