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Thursday, April 3, 2025

YOUR DAI­LY HEALTH

Keys launching HIV campaign aimed at women

by

20130503

You know her best as a mul­ti-plat­inum record­ing artist and a 14-time Gram­my award-win­ning singer, song­writer and pro­duc­er. But Ali­cia Keys has al­so made quite a name for her­self as a phil­an­thropist and AIDS ad­vo­cate.

It was in 2003, on her first trip to Africa, when Keys wit­nessed first­hand the dis­ease's dev­as­ta­tion.

When she re­turned to the Unit­ed States, she co-found­ed Keep a Child Alive, an or­gan­i­sa­tion that has raised mil­lions to care for HIV/AIDS pa­tients in Africa and In­dia.

"So, as I've grown, you know, I think one of the things that I've re­alised is that there are not the head­lines about the AIDS pan­dem­ic here in Amer­i­ca that there should be, and it is shock­ing, and it is un­ac­cept­able," Keys told CNN last month.

"Yet we're not speak­ing about it, and so that's what's kind of brought me around to re­al­ly be­com­ing a part of what I like to say, 'bridg­ing the con­ver­sa­tion' so that there's not on­ly an in­ter­na­tion­al con­ver­sa­tion, there's not on­ly a do­mes­tic con­ver­sa­tion, there's a glob­al con­ver­sa­tion that we can all be a part of."

Keys brought that con­ver­sa­tion to Wash­ing­ton, where she met with women be­ing treat­ed at the Unit­ed Med­ical Cen­ter's In­fec­tious Dis­eases Clin­ic.

She al­so teamed up with Greater Than AIDS, a na­tion­al pub­lic in­for­ma­tion group found­ed by the Kaiser Fam­i­ly Foun­da­tion and the Black AIDS In­sti­tute, to launch her lat­est ini­tia­tive–a cam­paign aimed at reach­ing out specif­i­cal­ly to Amer­i­can women.

It's called Em­pow­ered and phase one fea­tures a video of Keys and five women who are HIV-pos­i­tive from all walks of life.

They in­clude Stephanie, a col­lege grad­u­ate di­ag­nosed at 19; and Kym, di­ag­nosed three years ago af­ter her new hus­band got sick and died of the dis­ease (she did not know he'd been HIV-pos­i­tive for a decade).

Al­so in­clud­ed are Cristi­na, a grad­u­ate stu­dent born with the virus; Jen, a wife and moth­er who was di­ag­nosed at 18; and Eva, a wife, moth­er, grand­moth­er and home health care pro­fes­sion­al who found out she was HIV-pos­i­tive when she was just 17–and preg­nant.

The women share their sto­ries and their de­ter­mi­na­tion to change the course–and the face–of HIV/AIDS.

Keys said she wants all women to know the facts about HIV and its im­pact on women; to be able to speak open­ly about the dis­ease with fam­i­ly and friends; to pro­tect them­selves and their loved ones; to get test­ed with­out shame; and to live rich, healthy lives by get­ting and stay­ing on treat­ment.

"We can't act like it's not hap­pen­ing. We have to make sure we know that we're all at risk. This is all of our is­sues, you know. This doesn't make you bad...You shouldn't feel like you're ashamed. We have to make sure that we are de­mand­ing ac­cess to be­ing test­ed. We have to de­mand ac­cess to treat­ment with dig­ni­ty."

She found an al­ly in se­nior White House ad­vis­er Va­lerie Jar­rett, whose pas­sion about the epi­dem­ic in­spired her. Part of that pas­sion, Jar­rett said, comes from los­ing her sis­ter-in-law near­ly 20 years ago to the dis­ease.

"She was mar­ried with a young child and didn't re­al­ly get the test­ing that she should have had ear­ly on in her ill­ness be­cause it nev­er oc­curred to any­one that a mar­ried mom would ac­tu­al­ly...be HIV pos­i­tive," Jar­rett told CNN.

"Los­ing her was just dev­as­tat­ing for our fam­i­ly and so that's where I be­gan to re­alise, of course, this could hap­pen to any­body's fam­i­ly."

More than 1.1 mil­lion Amer­i­cans are HIV pos­i­tive, ac­cord­ing to the Cen­ters for Dis­ease Con­trol and Pre­ven­tion. One in five don't know they're in­fect­ed. One in four peo­ple liv­ing with HIV is a woman.

In Wash­ing­ton, one of the hard­est-hit ar­eas in the coun­try, rates among African-Amer­i­can women have sky­rock­et­ed–more than 92 per cent of women liv­ing with HIV there are black.

It was here, last year, that Keys and Jar­rett came to­geth­er and de­cid­ed to sup­port each oth­er's ef­forts. (cnn.com)


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