Science & Health

New Anti-AIDS Initiative Targets Young, Straight Males of Color

To slow the spread of HIV/AIDS by and among young, heterosexual males of color and encourage them to engage in a more public conversation about the disease, a Harlem-based group with citywide reach has launched its Young Men’s Initiative.

During its inaugural daylong Young’s Men Summit, a July 21 workshop series, group leaders and some of the targeted 13- to 24-year-old males explored topics ranging from the basics of sexual health to how to better communicate with potential and actual sexual partners.

Poor communication, said Vanessa Ramalho, a program coordinator for the initiative, “limits the effectiveness of prevention for young women [who are] … in a room with their partner who’s on a completely different page. They don’t know how to talk to their [male] partners about it.”

Or, as conference attendee Joshua Morgan,19, put it: “We’re not communicating. We’re fornicating.”

And that means everyone involved risks getting infected.

Project K.I.S.S., based at Weill Cornell-New York Presbyterian Hospital’s Pediatric Center for Special Studies, and the Young Women of Color HIV/AIDS Coalition created the Young’s Men Initiative. This program is designed to inform 13- to 24-year-old males about the dangers of the disease; provide a setting for them to have their concerns and opinions heard; and develop more HIV/AIDS programming specifically for minority men and boys.

“There are lots of programs to combat HIV/AIDS for women and the LGBT community,” said Kymsha Henry, a co-director for the young women’s coalition, referring to lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans-gendered people. “People aren’t looking at them [enough.] We want to get the conversation started.”

The CDC estimates that 1.2 million people are HIV-infected in the United States, and 20 percent of those do not know they are infected. In the fight against HIV/AIDS, males of color are a key demographic group. While much of earlier anti-AIDS efforts and research focused on homosexual men, the Young Men’s Initiative is one among several recent campaigns aimed at straight males and, consequently, their female counterparts. Black women, for example, ranked second behind gay men of all races in new HIV infections in 2009, the most recent year for which the federal Centers for Disease Control have tabulated that data. Heterosexual black men, heterosexual Hispanic women, and heterosexual white women, in that order, trailed black women in the number of infections.

The relative silences of young heterosexual males about HIV/AIDS only contribute to the problem, said Derrick Weekes, a project administrator of the Family, Adolescents and Children’s Experience, which runs an HIV/AIDS clinic at State University of New York’s Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn. Often, men “just don’t ask for help. We feel we’re invincible,” said Weekes, who attended the summit.

Many men of color hesitate to even be tested for AIDS, said Reggie Jenkins, outreach specialist with Housing Works, which provides housing, health and other services to HIV/AIDS clients. “The girl will get tested, and the guy won’t,” said Jenkins, who administered HIV blood tests at the summit. They are “afraid of the stigma.”

Some young men are unwilling to even discuss the possibility of contracting the disease, said attorney Angelo Pinto of Arthur Ashe Urban Health Institute in Brooklyn. Many young men falsely believe that admission will make them appear less masculine. “The first thing they identify as is a man,” said Pinto, whose clients include men in prison, where AIDS rates are disproportionately high, and they fear anything that might detract from that.

“They’re expected to start having sex earlier and with more women” as a sign of their masculinity, Ramalho added. “Their social expectations have really collided with their individual concerns” about health.

The young males at the summit did address some of those concerns and were allowed to bring up whatever related topics they chose.

If he ever did contract HIV/AIDS, said Richard Rivera, 19, he’s not sure how he would respond. “I, for one,” Rivera said, would fear “being rejected. And I think that’s most guys’ main fear, being rejected by girls.”

More candor about the topic between males and females could counteract some of those fears, teen attendee Joshua Morgan said. “We really don’t know each other till we sit down and talk to each other.”

Talking sometimes does yield the desired results, said Meaghan Brennan, a Project K.I.S.S. (Know Your Status. Inform Your Partners. Stay Safe.) peer advocate and workshop leader. She shared what happened after a group of boys and young men spent five months, beginning in 2011, pondering masculinity and sexuality. When one of the newest members of that group defended Chris Brown’s admitted beating of Rihanna, “all the other guys stood up and were, like, ‘That’s not cool. What if it happened to your sister? Why do you care if it’s your sister, but you don’t care if it’s this other girl?’ It was just really amazing.”

“I didn’t really realize,” she added, “we had come so far.”

On Twitter @NYCAndrewChang.