St. Lucie’s HIV/AIDS education is working, experts say
by Hillary Copsey, tcpalm.com | original link

FORT PIERCE — State health officials praised the efforts of Treasure Coast HIV prevention activists Tuesday at the fifth annual HIV/AIDS symposium hosted by the St. Lucie County Health Department and Indian River State College, but said their work was far from finished.

Since 2006, when St. Lucie County was shown to have the highest infection rate among blacks of any Florida county, the health department and other HIV prevention activists have made strides in fighting the sexually transmitted disease. Death rates and the numbers of cases of AIDS, the most severe form of the human immunodeficiency virus, have decreased.

But local infection rates remain steady across the Treasure Coast, said Dawn Jones, HIV/AIDS prevention coordinator for St. Lucie County and the four-county region that includes the Treasure Coast and Okeechobee. One in 35 blacks still are living with HIV; the infection rate for white and Hispanic women remain among the highest in the state.

Yet even those rates can be seen as a success because they are a direct result of increased awareness and testing in the community, Jones and other officials said.

“That’s how you solve problems. You confront them. You don’t sweep them under the rug,” said Tom Liberti, HIV/AIDS bureau chief for the Florida Department of Health. “St. Lucie County is a prime example of people stepping up to the plate.”

The local health department and community groups such as In the Image of Christ and Project Response worked to get the St. Lucie County School Board to revise its abstinence-only sex education curriculum. They started new testing initiatives, with In the Image of Christ sending people into the streets to pass out condoms and offer free HIV tests, got local churches involved and hosted conferences to raise awareness among the people most at risk to catch the virus.

That work can’t stop — and won’t, officials said.

The latest initiative is a two-day conference that begins Friday in St. Lucie County to address the issues that put men — especially black men — at risk.

About half of all Florida HIV cases are among black people. Men having sex with men account for more than half of all new infections.

“It’s the men in our community that are dragging our communities down,” said Ronald Henderson, statewide minority AIDS coordinator. “We have fathers who are not taking care of their kids, not paying child support, destroying our communities with drugs and crime.”

St. Lucie County is the first in the state to host a Man Up! conference, which will address family life, life after incarceration and other issues.