Cobb in Action: Containing the HIV/AIDS Pandemic in U.S African American Planning Meeting
The National Medical Association and the Cobb/ NMA Institute launched a movement to fight HIV/AIDS in the US African American Community. Mainstream HIV prevention measures have had limited success in the African American community, and the consequences have been devastating. African Americans account for almost half (47%) of those living with HIV/AIDS in the United States yet they make up less than 13% of the population. Read More.

The Cobb Institute, along with the UCLA AIDS Institute, and the Institute for Community Health Research at The Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science convened a planning meeting on May 17-18, 2007 entitled, Containing the HIV/AIDS Pandemic in the U.S. African American Community: Thinking “Out of the Box”.  The day and a half long forum was one of the most significant meetings addressing HIV prevention practices that work in the African American community.

The outcome of this meeting has been the formation of two committees to continue the work started in Los Angeles. The Research Committee is framing the important, ground breaking research findings presented and assisting in the publication of these findings in a special supplement of the JNMA.

These research priorities will complement other mobilization efforts that the NMA will be implementing to combat HIV through the Planning Committee formed at the Los Angeles meeting. The NMA with the assistance of the Cobb Institute will launch a national collaborative movement among organizations and congressional leaders to declare a state of emergency in the African American community as a result of the increasing HIV infection rate including the high number of new cases and the suspected high number of persons who are presently infected without their knowledge.

A group of 50 or more key experts, medical thought leaders, researchers, practitioners, advocates, and academicians contributed information to begin the process of setting the HIV research agenda and action plan for the Cobb Institute and NMA to address the epidemic facing African Americans. Attendees included representatives from the Black AIDS Institute; UCLA AIDS Institute; Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science; National Medical Association; Addiction, Research and Treatment Corporation; Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; Emory Center for AIDS Research; University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and the National Black Leadership Commission on AIDS Inc.

Please contact the Cobb Institute for full agenda and proceedings from this meeting.