Alabama is one of 33 states that mandates HIV education in high schools. Among those states, students receive an average of 2.2 hours of education, and most focus on abstinence. [AIDS in Black America: A Public Health Crisis]

When I started doing this work in 1986, roughly 20 percent of all of the people in the United States who were living with AIDS were African-American. The most recent statistics from the Center for Disease Control indicate that 45 percent of all the new cases of HIV infection are amongst African-Americans. … If we continue on the current trend, in the year 2015, especially in the South, it will probably be the case that 5 to 6 percent of all African-American adults who are sexually active will be infected with the virus.

— Dr. Robert Fullilove, on today’s Fresh Air about AIDS in the African-American community.

Of the more than 1 million people in the U.S. infected with HIV, nearly half are black men, women and children — even though blacks make up about 13 percent of the population. AIDS is the primary killer of African-Americans ages 19 to 44, and the mortality rate is 10 times higher for black Americans than for whites.

— AIDS in Black America: A Public Health Crisis

AIDS is now the leading cause of death for African-American women between the ages of 25 and 34 and the primary killer for all African Americans in the 19-44 age group.

— Robert Fullilove, guest on today’s show.

(Source: mailman.columbia.edu)

Every nine and a half minutes, somewhere in America, someone is infected with HIV. Half of them are black.

— Today: why AIDS/HIV is so much worse in the black community. [Get tested]

Thursday: A discussion about AIDS and the African-American community.

Above: Philly AIDS/HIV cases by zip code (2010) [more on Philadelphia and HIV/AIDS testing]

[Find a testing site near you.]

The numbers are staggering: One-third of Americans are obese; another third are overweight. Some 26 million Americans have Type 2 diabetes. An additional 79 million more are pre-diabetic. Thanks to these figures, the children of today have a good chance of becoming the first generation of Americans to die at younger ages than their parents.

Today: Why we’re getting fat. Obesity expert Kelly Brownell will explain why changes in eating habits, the food we eat and our sedentary lifestyles pose serious threat to adults and children.

The ability for a society to grasp the connection between sexual culture and the spread of this epidemic is just essential to reversing it. And it seems like the more the United States or other Western nations get involved, the farther societies get away from that kind of moment of reckoning.

— On today’s Fresh Air, how international AIDS organizations working in Africa went off in the wrong direction in fighting the spread of HIV across the continent.

On today’s Fresh Air, physician Paul Farmer on Haiti: “If any country was a mineshaft canary for the reintroduction of cholera, it was Haiti — and we knew it. And in retrospect, more should have been done to prepare for cholera … which can spread like wildfire in Haiti. … This was a big rebuke to all of us working in public health and health care in Haiti.”

Paul Farmer, “This I Believe.”

(Source: youtube.com)

The only real nation is humanity.

— 

Paul Farmer (via ndeming)

Tomorrow: Physician and anthropologist Paul Farmer on Haiti’s health crisis

Today: the story of American medical care as seen from the perspective of Dr. David Ansell, who treated the uninsured in Chicago for 17 years.

Tomorrow: the story of American medical care as seen from the perspective of an inner city Chicago hospital. We speak with Dr. David Ansell, whose experiences treating patients at Chicago’s public Cook County Hospital make a strong case for national health care reform.

chicago — (by Melody Kramer)

Historian Michael Willrich details the smallpox epidemic of 1898-1904, explaining that many people were forced to receive the vaccine against their will: “There was one episode in Middlesboro, KY where the police and a group of vaccinators went into this African-American section of town, rounded up people outside this home, handcuffed the men and women and vaccinated them at gunpoint. It’s a shocking scene and very much at odds with our daily-held notions of American liberty.” [full interview here]