African American women continue to be at the forefront of the discussion of health disparities, especially as related to Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) and Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS). Nationally, African American women account for 64% of new HIV diagnoses among women, and AIDS is one of the top ten leading causes of death for African American women aged 15-64 years. Notwithstanding HIV/AIDS, African Americans continue to experience disparities related to physical health and mental health outcomes, as compared to the larger U.S. population. Although there has been a wealth of research examining HIV/AIDS prevention programs targeting African American women, the ways in which participants understand and create meaning from these interventions are lacking in the literature. Several qualitatively oriented papers have discussed themes derived from the lived experience of persons living with HIV/AIDS, however, the collective patterns of shared meanings and experiences (personal and cultural) that create a sense of purpose, and understanding to an individual's life as it pertains to HIV prevention have not been explored. The purpose of this qualitative study was to examine how the participants of the Healer Women Fighting Disease Project in Austin, Texas understand themselves in relation to the intervention. The Healer Women Fighting disease intervention is an African-centered HIV prevention program that includes a general health component to address preventive health alongside HIV/AIDS prevention. One component of the intervention focused on sacred stones (i.e., Healing Stone) as a traditional African healing tool used for African American women's health and mental health. Using Afrocentric theory as the basic framework for this program, the African Centered Behavioral Change Model was based on the principle of re-instilling traditional cultural values into African-descent people based on the premise that African Americans, for the most part, survived historically based on Afrocentric worldviews and African values and traditions. The data for the study were secondary data of journals written by women over an eight-week period who participated in the Healer Women program, a systematic random sample of the 60 journals (from the original study) was used to select 20 journals for analysis for this study. Phenomenological analysis was used to elicit themes, ultimately leading to five major themes, three of which had subthemes. The themes that emerged during the coding and analysis process included: turning to a higher power (subthemes: leaning on faith and practicing faith); self-care (subthemes: thinking, identifying and practicing); sense of true self (subthemes: becoming, I can imagine, and I am), healing from previous pain, and sense of purpose and meaning. Findings suggest that the sacred stones held strong resonance for the women and strongly impacted their commitment to better health and mental health. Further, creating meaning within the context of the women's African heritage was the key to achieving behavioral change, and empowering the women to make healthier life choices. In addition, the findings suggest that incorporating African cultural values in the lives of African American women promotes, physical and mental well-being, spirituality, healing, a sense of authentic self, and purpose and meaning. Therefore, as health disparities continue to rise in this population, Afrocentric and effective prevention programming is desperately needed. This research highlights that social work and public health prevention programs aimed at eradicating HIV/AIDS and promoting wellness for African American women should include African cultural values and principles as the core of the intervention in order to yield positive outcomes among this population.

AIDS is the second-leading cause of death among African American women between the ages of 18 and 44. African American women constitute 63% of all cases of AIDS among women in the United States. This volume brings together the collective wisdom of scholars, researchers, and social work professionals dealing with these concerns. Focusing attention on the primary population of women impacted by AIDS, this book presents culturally sensitive responses that meet the specific needs of African American women. An historical and current overview of the alarming HIV infection rate among African Americans, in particular women, introduces the crisis. Subsequent chapters highlight HIV/AIDS prevention and intervention strategies that are successfully impacting the African American population. Guided by a feminist perspective and grounded in social construction theory, social work theory, and social work practice, this volume privileges the voice of African American women, the group that is the most disenfranchised—and least accurately represented—in AIDS-related research and writing. This essential guide sheds light on a calamity too often overlooked, making it especially valuable for scholars, students, researchers, and practitioners involved with HIV/AIDS issues in the African American community, and with women's and black studies.

Black/African American women are disproportionately affected by human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) disease. The purpose of this study was to gain an in-depth understanding of the experiences of a group of lower socioeconomic, older Black/African American women, who were living with HIV disease. A purposive sample of ten participants was obtained and data was collected through unstructured interviews. Using the phenomenological stance of Merleau Ponty, and guided by van Manen's methodological processes, seven essential themes emerged: transcending adversity and becoming; using knowledge as empowerment; dealing with HIV stigma; concealing and revealing; tending to their emotional life; and caring for others while they themselves were being cared for. The meaning of living with HIV disease is a dynamic interrelated patterning process of these essential themes. The findings support Pamela Reed's theory of Self-Transcendence. Implications for nursing include: the urgent need for a paradigm shift that acknowledge the strengths of older Black/African American women; the need for the integration of sexual assessment and education on risk reduction and medication adherence into routine healthcare encounters; and for further research to expand the data base on strategies that older Black/African American women use to overcome diversity and live with HIV disease. Key Words: HIV; older Black/African American women; self-transcendence.

Black Women's Risk for HIV: Rough Living is a valuable look into the structural and behavioral factors in high-risk environmentsspecifically inner-city neighborhoods like the Rough in Atlantathat place black women in danger of HIV infection. Using black feminism to deconstruct the meaning and significance of race, class, and gender, this text gives a voice to a unique disenfranchised population and legitimizes their lives and experiences. This important ethnographic study focuses not only on the problems associated with the continued rise in HIV rates among African American women, but provides viable solutions to these problems as well.

I wrote this dissertation for the School of Advanced Studies at University of Phoenix, Arizona, in 2011. To do the research for the dissertation, I spent quite a bit of time at the Center of Disease Control and Prevention archives as a graduate student. I also interviewed medical doctors and others who knew about the subject matter. Since I wrote this dissertation, there has been more research published that I will continue to research and add to my archival collection. The issues of this dissertation were discussed as the emergent theoretical model and its components, which included implications of research, practice, stigma, burden, advocacy, and awareness. Leadership, education, and community resources were the dominant themes that emerged in the study. The study findings imply an increased need for leaders to present public awareness about the affects HIV/AIDS has on the African American community. Future research should consider the explicit nature of the answers, which benefited the study. The information would be helpful while improving the quality of life available for African American women and would enable leaders to interact with a leadership perspective (USAID, 2009).

Throughout the world, the threat of HIV/AIDS to women’s health has become the focus of increased concern. The Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (2004) reports that almost 20 million women and girls are living with HIV globally, accounting for nearly half of all people living with HIV worldwide. Infection rates among women are rising in every region worldwide including high-income countries in which heterosexual intercourse may now be the most common mode of transmission. Although there are many contributing factors to the current trends in HIV, most women who become HIV-infected do not practice "high-risk" behaviour. Women worldwide may individually view themselves as less susceptible than men, and may pay less attention about how HIV is transmitted and how to prevent infection. There are also gender inequalities, stemming from sexual double standards that constrain women’s access to care, treatment, and support. This work focuses on international perspectives on women and HIV casting a deliberately wide net addressing the issue of the interaction between HIV and gender in a specific geographic area. Our intention is to provide a forum for innovative manuscripts whose contribution to the literature is found in their unique approach to this interaction and application of empirical investigation to unique problems and/or populations. This material was published in the Journal of Human Behavior in the Social Environment.

In Holding On anthropologist Alyson O’Daniel analyzes the abstract debates about health policy for the sickest and most vulnerable Americans as well as the services designated to help them by taking readers into the daily lives of poor African American women living with HIV at the advent of the 2006 Treatment Modernization Act. At a time when social support resources were in decline and publicly funded HIV/AIDS care programs were being re-prioritized, women’s daily struggles with chronic poverty, drug addiction, mental health, and neighborhood violence influenced women’s lives in sometimes unexpected ways. An ethnographic portrait of HIV-positive black women and their interaction with the U.S. healthcare system, Holding On reveals how gradients of poverty and social difference shape women’s health care outcomes and, by extension, women’s experience of health policy reform. Set among the realities of poverty, addiction, incarceration, and mental illness, the case studies in Holding On illustrate how subtle details of daily life affect health and how overlooking them when formulating public health policy has fostered social inequality anew and undermined health in a variety of ways.