The Center for Social Support and Education (CSSE), an organization established to create opportunities for San Diego’s HIV-positive and low-income African-American communities, has been awarded a $250,000 grant to launch Heart-to-Heart, a community project designed to provide HIV/AIDS education targeting African Americans. CSSE presenters will conduct candid conversations with community members, groups, and other organizations in order to provide them with accurate and appropriate information concerning HIV and AIDS. This will include personal testimonies from those living with or caring for individuals impacted by HIV and AIDS.

The new project model will address the need to formally introduce sexual and risk information within the community in a culturally sensitive, non-threatening environment. According to CSSE, discussing HIV and AIDS openly and other topics related to infection is sometimes considered taboo, therefore the lack of communication causes an increased transmission of disease.

“We want everybody to get over the fear, to get over the stigma to be able to talk about it openly,” said Maria Iturralde, programs coordinator for CSSE. “In order to present HIV, we have to get them to even open up about that as well. First and foremost it’s prevention and education…getting it out there because it’s not really out there.”

One main goal of Heart-to-Heart is to reduce the increasingly alarming rate of people of color infected with AIDS in San Diego. CSSE is not just targeting at-risk populations within the community, however, but any other groups in the community who could be impacted.

“Of course the project is targeted more towards African Americans because they are the highest at risk. We are targeting the community as a whole,” explained Iturralde. “It’s going to involve everything from churches to social groups to schools…it’s going to be everybody – teenagers, elders, everyone,” said Iturralde.

In San Diego County, three quarters of AIDS cases are in the city of San Diego and one-fifth of those cases are African Americans, according to data compiled by CSSE.

“This component is vital in providing services for people before they become infected, before they infect others, or before they know their status, and we are pleased to partner with California Endowment in providing this commitment to the San Diego African-American community,” stated CSSE executive director Arvella Murray in a press release.

According to the County of San Diego Health and Human Services Agency’s (HSSA) 2004 HIV/AIDS Epidemiology Report, African Americans have the highest AIDS rate in San Diego County. The report explained calculating a disease rate is a better indication of the burden of a particular disease on a population since not all population sizes are the same. Since 1986 African Americans have had the highest rate of AIDS in San Diego County, the report said. In 2003 the AIDS rate for African Americans in the county was 36 cases per 100,000 residents, a rate disproportionately higher than whites (9), Hispanics (15) and all racial and ethnic groups combined (11).

The African-American rate was down from 2002’s rate of 47 per 100,000. Terry Cunningham, chief of the office of AIDS coordination, saw this as an encouraging sign that educational and prevention programs are starting to make a difference and help decrease the rate of infection.

“I think that what we’re seeing is some of the messages finally getting through. That we have a lot of community partners working on the issues and they’re the ones that know the population the best,” said Cunningham.

The $250,000 grant CSSE received from the California Endowment to launch the Heart-to-Heart project was important since funds set aside for such prevention programs are decreasing, Cunningham explained.

“They’re being more and more successful at getting the word out even though the money keeps shrinking for being able to provide prevention messages to the populations. But we’ve got some very dedicated community organizations that are working very hard to make end roads into both the African-American female population [and] the Latina population so those numbers will keep decreasing.”

On a national level, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported in 2003, rates of AIDS cases were 58.2 per 100,000 among the African-American population compared to 20.0 in the Hispanic population, and 6.1 in the white population.

As for HIV infections, the HSSA also documented through the end of 2003, 62 percent of reported HIV cases were white, 13 percent were African American and 21 percent were Hispanic in San Diego County.

In 1992 CSSE was established with a mission to create opportunities for San Diego’s HIV-positive and low-income African-American communities to access appropriate social, educational and medical services.

Specific projects include short-term and transitional housing for HIV-positive individuals; community information and referral services; HIV prevention and education activities; distribution of hygiene packets; safe-sex kits; community outreach; computer literacy classes; adult literacy classes; HIV testing services; community voicemail services; alcoholic anonymous groups; and health promotion events.