Thomas Breen photo
New Haven Mayor’s Task Force on AIDS member Seth Poole.
Use condoms. Don’t use dirty needles. And keep talking and talking and talking about HIV, to both raise awareness and reduce the stigma.
Seth Poole shared those tips on combating the spread of HIV/AIDS in New Haven at Tuesday night’s regular monthly meeting of the Newhallville Community Management Team in the cafeteria of Lincoln-Bassett School on Bassett Street.
Poole, a youth development specialist and educator at Planned Parenthood of Southern New England (PPSNE), is a member of the Mayor’s Task Force on AIDS, an advisory body charged with advocating for New Haveners with HIV/AIDS through community partnerships, conversations, and fundraising efforts.
Poole told the roughly 50 attendees at Tuesday night’s management team meeting that the Elm City has come a long way from the height of the epidemic in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when HIV/AIDS was the leading cause of death among New Haveners between 25 and 40 years old, 25 – 40 year old.
But three decades later, he said, men who have sex with men, people who inject drugs, and, increasingly, heterosexual women of color are still disproportionately vulnerable to contracting HIV, the Human Immunodeficiency Virus, which is the virus that leads to AIDS, the Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome.
Tuesday night’s Newhallville Community Management Team meeting.
“We are very close to stopping the spread of HIV/AIDS in our community,” Poole said. But that shouldn’t blind New Haveners to the risk the disease poses, particularly in black and brown communities, particularly when people feel too uncomfortable or ashamed to get tested.
Poole said that, since 1981, New Haven has seen 3,265 documented cases of HIV.
As of 2017, according to the latest data collected by the state Department of Public Health HIV Surveillance Program, New Haven has 1,403 people living with HIV.
Sixty-four percent of those people are male, 36 percent female. Fifty percent are African American, 29 percent Hispanic, and 17 percent white.
Twenty-four percent are men who contracted HIV through sex with other men, 35 percent contracted HIV through injecting drugs, and 28 percent contracted HIV through heterosexual contact.
Poole noted that 32 New Haveners were newly diagnosed with HIV in 2017, a small drop from 36 new HIV diagnoses in the city in 2016.
However, he added, the city saw a “4 percent spike” in HIV diagnoses among black heterosexual women in New Haven from 2016 to 2017.
He said that 30 percent of people who show up at Yale-New Haven Hospital with complications from HIV/AIDS die as a result of their illnesses.
“We have to turn this tide immediately in order to avoid a public health crisis,” he said.
A young boy, no older than 5 years old, piped up with a question at the end of Poole’s presentation.
“How do people get HIV anyway?” he asked.
Though dirty needles, Poole responded. And through unprotected sex.
“People with HIV, we always encourage to practice safe sex,” he said.
He encouraged parents in the room to talk with their kids about using condoms and dental dams. He advised everyone to get tested for HIV whenever they start having sex with a new partner.
“Know what your status is,” he said.
People at high risk of contracting HIV, he said, should take the Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP) Truvada, which dramatically reduces the risk of contracting HIV among HIV-negative individuals who come into with HIV.
“In the state of Connecticut,” he said, “only one child has been born with HIV in the past decade.” That’s a trend that New Haveners should all like to see continue.
Click here to learn about the Mayor’s Task Force on AIDS. Click here to learn more about the 15th annual AIDS Walk New Haven, which will take place on the New Haven Green on April 13.