Schalk argues that the NBWHP's approach to HIV/AIDS is a prime example of how health activism work can work to reduce the severity and incidence of disability, illness, and disease while also participating in disability politics by supporting those who are disabled, ill and sick. The NBWHP's HIV/AIDS activism is a prime example of how organizations can do this work in antiracist, feminist and anti-ableist ways. 

How the NBWHP's Approach to HIV/AIDS Is An Example of Black Disability Politics

HIV/AIDS was originally only viewed as a medical epidemiologic concern for white gay men. This assumption was made was in part because of assumptions from medical professionals and in part because white gay men had some of the earliest documented cases of HIV/AIDS and  white gay men served at the forefront of activism that emerged from the HIV/AIDS epidemic.

HIV/AIDS Becoming a Medical Epidemiological Concern

The National Black Women's Health Project took a dual-pronged approach to the HIV/AIDS epidemic which on one had aimed to reduce the number of new HIV infections and another prong which worked to provide support to Black women living with HIV/AIDS.

University of Wisconsin - Madison

Schalk analyzes the NBWHP as an example of Black disability politics because:
- how disability was explicitly and implicitly included within NBWHP's mission
- NBHWP's self-help phiilosophy
- NBWHP's holistic, cultural, and political approaches to health and wellness
- how spirituality was incorporated into NBWHP's public health work.

NBWHP as Black Disability Politics

Schalk, Sami. Black Disability Politics, New York, USA: Duke University Press, 2022. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781478027003

Black Disability Politics

The NBWHP's work is intersectional in nature because it is centered on the intersection of race and gender. This is evident both with how the organization grew out of white feminist health activism as a specifically Black feminist health organization, but also in publications and internal documents that overwhelmingly name racism and sexism as categories of oppression with major impacts on Black women's health.

Intersectionality and the NBWHP

The National Black Women's Health Project defined health as "not merely the absence of illness, but the active promotion of physical, spiritual, mental and emotional wellness of this and future generations."

How the National Black Women's Health Project Defines Health

The NBWHP rooted their health activist work in the lived experiences of Black women and the culture of the Black and African diaspora communities they lived in. The cultural approach to health taken by the NBWHP is similar to how disability is often contextualized within other Black disability politics. 

How the NBWHP's Cultural Approaches to Health Connect to Black Disability Politics

The NBWHP saw health as inherently political and recognized its links to other oppressions. THE NBWHP also recognized health's status as being affected by political policy but also sought to raise political engagement within its membership.

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