On National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day, the National AIDS Fund (NAF) remembers the thousands of
African Americans who have lost their lives to the disease, and honors those currently living with
HIV. NAF is committed to helping African Americans and all communities of color at risk for HIV protect themselves from the disease and be ever-vigilant in their communities about preventing HIV’s spread.
National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day is directed, planned, and organized by a working group of national organizations in partnership with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The goal of National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day is to mobilize communities and address specific issues regarding local epidemics and best practices that are science-based and will influence the course of HIV in black communities across the United States.
Mobilizing community responses to HIV/AIDS has been the mission of NAF since its inception more than 20 years ago. Having long recognized HIV/AIDS’ disproportionate affect on the nation’s communities of color, NAF has deployed a vast majority of its financial resources to support community-driven, evidence-based prevention interventions targeting African American populations and other disproportionately-affected communities of color.
Recognizing the need to mobilize even more, NAF’s strategic plan targets the need to increase resources for the country’s most highly affected populations, and has thus created the Every Life Matters…Every Dollar Counts campaign. The goal of Every Life Matters…Every Dollar Counts is to cultivate philanthropic leadership and engage donors from within populations of color most affected by HIV, then direct these resources back into those respective communities.
“National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day (NBHAAD) reminds us that our work to end HIV/AIDS is far from over,” said Valerie Montgomery Rice, MD, Executive Director of the Meharry Medical College Center for Women’s Health Research, NAF Trustee and chair of NAF’s Every Life Matters…Every Dollar Counts campaign. “We must become reinvigorated leaders, and we must inspire new leadership to halt the spread of HIV/AIDS in the African American community and in all populations affected by the disease.”
