Anne Marie Brungard Knight wants black people living with AIDS and HIV to come out of “hiding.” Wednesday night she helped some people do that.
Brungard Knight (pictured) runs a group called AIDS Interfaith. Wednesday night she joined around 50 people in the cafeteria of Career High School for a second “town meeting” on the disease.
The turnout doubled the first town meeting’s attendance. That was a hopeful sign for what Knight and others described as a key challenge: the stigma that comes with the sickness.
Brungard Knight spoke of a “see-no-evil” challenge in the African American community facing people with the illness. She said people aren’t talking enough about HIV and AIDS in the black community, and it’s time for people to stand up.
“We have created an environment where people are hiding because of the stigma,” she said. “We are creating something where people are more at risk of getting HIV and more at risk of infecting others.”
She said she would like to see churches doing more to educate communities about HIV and AIDS because they are the “central piece of our cultural background.”
“We sometimes act as if we don’t see what we really see in our community,” she said. “It’s like we don’t want to see what really happens.”
Brungard Knight said people aren’t talking enough about HIV and AIDS in the black community. She said it’s time for black community members to stand up.
“Black teens account for 70 percent of the new AIDS cases that are reported,” said Brungard Knight, “and I’m talking about kids between the ages of 13 and 19.”
“People are afraid and ashamed,” said Rev. Alexander R. Garbera, “and that keeps them from getting health care. It keeps them from exposing their status.”
Garbera said he has been living with HIV for 20 years.
The Mayor’s Task Force on HIV and AIDS organized the event, hosted by Bob Sideleau, a drug treatment advocate at Hill Health Center and Joyce Poole (pictured at left with Garbera), co-chair of the task force.
Luz Gonzalez, executive director of Hispanos Unidos, spoke about the challenges Hispanics face due to language barriers and citizenship questions. She also said there needs to be better relations between case managers and clients.
She spoke of a client who became ill because he didn’t understand the dosage instructions on the medicine and took the wrong dosage.
“We have to educate our clients,” said Gonzalez, “so they know that they have to do their part and we’ll do our part.”
Nicholas Boshnack, director of client services for AIDS Project New Haven, agreed that relations could be better between patients and caregivers. He spoke about case management and discussed ways it could be improved.
“Too many times, the doctors have attitudes and mental problems,” said an attendee to laughs from the audience.
Boshnack said case managers can and should relay issues to doctors that patients may be embarrassed to do relay themselves.
“What we want is the best health and well-being for our clients,” said Boshnack (pictured). “Sometimes there are challenges. What if their challenge is that they’ve picked up and are using again?
He said the case manager is supposed to ensure that the client is aware of what is going with their health and concerns, and the case managers need to be aware of what’s going on with the client.
Boshnack said, “Our focus is to sit with clients and individually discuss with them their needs.”
He said he meets with case managers throughout the city twice a month in order to create better relations between them and their clients.
The group agreed that they would like to see awareness go back to basics of educating people on the illness; that prevention is key, and awareness needs to be raised.
She said there are people who either don’t want to get tested or don’t want to know their test results because of the negative stigma it would cause in their environment.
On that note, Garbera has this to say: “You can’t live your life in fear of what other people think, you have to do what’s right for you.”