March 20 marks National Native AIDS Day, set to coincide with the spring equinox. Created to promote HIV testing in Native communities and decrease the stigma surrounding the disease, the day also casts light on the challenges of addressing the spread of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) in Native communities.
People working to combat HIV in Indian Country are faced with a double whammy: infection rates are on the rise, but funding sources to fight the epidemic are drying up. And while many reservations can attest to the ongoing epidemic, national data are lacking to convince the federal government that the problem in Indian Country deserves increasing attention—and increasingly precious funds.
The bottleneck is due in part to a major national policy shift announced in mid-2010, when the White House released its “National HIV/AIDS Strategy.” The centerpiece of the policy, more frugal than those before it, looks smart enough, with a primary goal to “intensify HIV prevention in the communities where HIV is most heavily concentrated,” according to materials released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It happens that HIV rates are highest in cities—which means funds are being diverted away from rural and more sparsely populated areas. Those areas include most Indian nations, says Robert Foley, CEO of the National Native American AIDS Prevention Center (NNAAPC), a Denver, Colorado-based nonprofit group.
