June 2005

HIV/AIDS Challenges Health Officials in the Southeast

Between 2000 and 2002, the number of AIDS cases rose 27% in five Southern states—Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, North Carolina, and South Carolina—compared with an 11% increase in Midwestern states. In North Carolina alone, the number of AIDS cases increased by 36% between 2001 and 2003. Southeastern states also have the nation’s highest rates of chlamydia and gonorrhea. The problem is exacerbated in the Southeast by poverty, poor health care services, and low numbers of people with health insurance. Another concern is the diverse, sometimes silent and isolated, groups throughout the South that present cultural and linguistic challenges. Moreover, many men who have sex with men but who do not consider themselves gay or bisexual are hard to reach with prevention messages.

Since 2003 the Pfizer Philanthropy Southern HIV/AIDS Prevention Initiative has provided more than $3 million in grants to community organizations in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississipppi, North and South Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas. It gives priority to small and medium-sized organizations that use culturally appropriate prevention messages to target underserved communities that are disproportionately vulnerable to HIV/AIDS. Pfizer Chair and CEO Hank McKinnell said that “instead of focusing on the cost of treatment, if we invested more in [prevention], we’d all be better off.”