AIDS Taskforce of Greater Cleveland's Earl Pike
Their Executive Director on "Cleveland HIV Testing Week" and Beyond

Monday, June 23rd marks Day One of Cleveland’s HIV Testing Week. The National Association of People with AIDS created National HIV Testing Day in 1995 to encourage community groups to interact with local residents to promote HIV testing and awareness on a one-on-one basis. Cleveland has held HIV Testing Week ever since, and AIDS Taskforce of Greater Cleveland Executive Director Earl Pike has high hopes for the difference this outreach continues to make each year.

“It’s become more significant with each passing year,” Pike believes, “in part because it’s so clear now that if people with HIV get good medication--and they can get good medication now--that their long-term chances of survival are infinitely better than they were 15 years ago. So it’s a little bit like cancer these days, in that early detection matters, and that’s why we want people to get tested.”

Two years ago, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) selected Cleveland and a handful of other cities to take part in a social marketing campaign to push for HIV testing among minority women, and the numbers of African-American and Latina women participating in testing rose considerably, according to Pike. Cleveland is also one of the leaders in the quest for alternative methods to prevent the spread of HIV.

“Cleveland is one of maybe a dozen sites around the world that’s doing some of the most interesting microbicide research [at the Center for AIDS Research at University Hospitals]. That’s what gives me hope.”

An important factor in taking care of the approximately 4,000 Greater Clevelanders living with HIV/AIDS, and in spreading the facts about prevention and testing, is that so many local HIV/AIDS activists are themselves infected. “There’s a really strong community of people with HIV who speak up,” Pike explains. “I’ve always felt like, in any movement for social change or community improvement that the affected community needs to be intimately involved in the decision-making and planning, and Cleveland is a community where that’s really true. That’s not true everywhere you go.”

Pike also praises what he calls Cleveland’s “progressive political leadership” on sex education and LGBT issues. “The fact that Frank Jackson and the County Commissioners two years ago said, ‘We’re not doing enough to educate kids in the Cleveland Public Schools, so we’re gonna do K through 12 comprehensive sex education that includes information about condoms and contraceptives, and we’re gonna find the money to pay for it.’ And Jackson and the County Commissioners didn’t poll people for what they thought about that…they just did it, which is kind of amazing.”

Though the economic spectrum for those infected with HIV/AIDS is wide, a great many of those who are infected are unable to afford expensive, potentially life-saving medications, and they often lack access to accurate information and condoms. “It’s so clear to me that poverty and HIV sleep together,” Pike says. Creating financial opportunities has become a priority. “On a very personal level what that’s meant in the last year is that I’ve become more involved in stuff around economic development and jobs development, because I know that in the long run, it will impact our clients’ perception of their ability to have independence, to have choices.”

The most important message HIV Testing Week is pushing is a simple one, and it applies to every race, sexual orientation, age, and tax bracket: “If you’re sexually active, you should get tested once a year, you really should, because we can do something,” Pike urges. “We can make your life better.”

All Cleveland HIV Testing Week events are free and open to the public. For a list of events go to http://www.aidstaskforce.org/events.asp.

From Cool Cleveland contributor Dana Aritonovich mrsgrohl1@yahoo.com
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