Minority Health Conference focuses on “AIDS at 25”

CHAPEL HILL – “AIDS at 25: It’s Time to Deliver” is the topic of the 28th annual Minority Health Conference to be held Friday (Feb. 23) at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s William and Ida Friday Center for Continuing Education. The event is sponsored by the UNC School of Public Health.

“We have a big mission to cover issues of research, education, and activism in the 25-year fight against AIDS/HIV among minorities,” said Nancy DeSousa, one of the student organizers and a graduate student in the school’s department of health behavior and health education.

Co-chairperson LaToya White added, “The conference will reflect the need that still exists in many communities in the U.S. for education, health care access, financial support, compassion, and healing. White is completing her master’s in public health.

Opening the conference with the William T. Small Jr. Keynote Lecture will be Dr. David Malebranche, assistant professor at Emory University’s School of Medicine in Atlanta. Malebranche, a clinician and a researcher, says he plans to “comprehensively cover where we have been, where we are, and future directions concerning this epidemic, emphasizing both the medical advances and the social underpinnings driving the rates among various racial/ethnic groups.”

The conference will also feature smaller sessions on a variety of related topics — drug use, gender, prison populations, health insurance issues, discrimination, the role of faith-based groups, and HIV in the Latino community. HIV rates continue to rise disproportionately in minority communities.

The conference is the nation’s oldest student-organized minority health conference. Although conference attendance is at capacity, the keynote address will be re-broadcast Friday via satellite and webcast at 2 p.m. ET. Visit www.minority.unc.edu for details.

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UNC School of Public Health contact: Ramona DuBose, (919) 966-7467, ramona_dubose@unc.edu
North Carolina Institute for Public Health contact: Bev Holt, (919) 966-6274, bev_holt@unc.edu