In editions of Vital Signs published during the HIV/AIDS epidemic the NBWHP published articles written by Black women living with HIV/AIDS, including Black lesbians with HIV/AIDS aimed at building community for Black women with HIV/AIDS.

How the NBWHP Centered the Voices of Black Women with HIV/AIDS

From October 17-18, 1988 the NBWHP hosted From Cries and Whispers: Black Women Talking About AIDS, this conference took place in Washington, D.C., and served as a place for Black women, including women living with HIV/AIDS, advocates, caregivers, government representatives, and health and social service providers to work to address the AIDS epidemic. The conference had three panels, one consisted of women with AIDS speaking about their experiences and needs, the second consisted of government representatives and the third had advocacy representatives. The panels were each followed by a small group discussion hosted in the model of the NBWHP's self-help groups. The conference clearly centered on the needs and oppression faced by Black women with HIV/AIDS including the conference report noting the effects from family abandonment to denial of health care and ambulance transportation to job discrimination that can happen to Black women with HIV/AIDS and the conference and report emphasized the need to provide physical, emotional, social and financial support to people with HIV/AIDS and their families.

From Cries and Whispers: Black Women Talking About AIDS

The NBWHP created self-help groups specifically for Black women with HIV/AIDS. NBWHP literature on the creation of these groups notes that Black women with AIDS often desire a sense of sisterhood and often the counselors and service providers who visit them in hospitals and shelters are white people without HIV/AIDS. These groups served as spaces for Black women to form community, share information, and provide hope to each other amongst individuals who shared the embodied experience of being Black women.

The Use of Self-Help Groups For Black Women with HIV/AIDS

The NBWHP also created self-help groups for front line health care workers, such as orderlies, nurse aides and pratical nurses who because of being invalidated in their role in the medical industrial system may allow prejudices and attitudes to influence their interactions with individuals with HIV/AIDS. The NBWHP conducted these groups as a way to improve support for people with HIV.AIDS. Schalk notes it was unclear whether the NBWHP secured funding to create these groups. The NBWHP used information from Black women with HIV/AIDS to educate and support first-line health workers. The NBWHP also recognized that these first-line workers were often working class people.

The Use of Self-Help Groups For HIV-Negative Individuals

The NBWHP in addition to working to prevent HIV/AIDS also worked to actively support Black Women with HIV/AIDS this support took a few different forms:
- Centering the voices of Black women with HIV/AIDS
- Hosting the conference "From Cries and Whispers: Black Women Talking About AIDS"
- Support Groups

University of Wisconsin - Madison

Eli Clare argues that cure in American society is not viewed only as the complete elimination of disability, disease, debility, infirmity, and illness but also includes the structures and rhetoric around diagnosis, treatment, management, rehabilitation and prevention since all of these structures seek to define, classify disability in order to assimilate ones experience back into non-disabled dominant society. Clare argues that the ideology of cure emplores people to seek a state of no harm that is deemed as a "superior state."

Eli Clare's Arguments about Cure

The NBWHP built cultural competency into their prevention work by:
- debunking myths around HIV/AIDS and the Black community
- understanding and building programming around the unique societal positioning and concerns of Black women
- physically placing programming in places Black women felt safe
connecting HIV/AIDS to the larger issues central to Black communities
- destigmatizing HIV/AIDS for HIV-negative Black people

How the NBWHP Built Cultural Competency into Their Prevention Work

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

Black Disability Politics

The NWBHP's Support for Black Women with HIV/AIDS

Dr. Elena M. Andresen, a professor emerita from Oregon Health and Sciences University, details that one of the main sites of friction between public health and disability studies is the differing view of prevention work between the two fields. Andresen notes that in disability studies literature prevention is often presented akin to eugenics in preventing the existence of people with disabilities - whereas folks in the Public Health field view prevention through the lens of preventing the incidence and severity of an injury or condition, public health does not consider disability selective abortion or euthanasia as part of public health work but it is easy to see the slippery slope from preventing incidences and severity to preventing disability.

The Conflict Between Public Health and Disability Studies

As previously mentioned, HIV/AIDS was originally seen as a disease that solely affected white gay men. This misinformation often led to Black women falsely believing they couldn't contract HIV/AIDS and thus didn't need to work to prevent it. The NBWHP worked to inform Black women that anyone can contract HIV.

How the NBWHP Worked to Debunk Myths Around HIV/AIDS

The NBWHP made safer-sex education materials that addressed some of the concerns and barriers to safer sex for Black women in the 1980s and 1990s. One example of these barriers was the silence in Black communities around the intercommunal sexual and domestic violence faced by Black women.

How the NBWHP Aimed HIV/AIDS Prevention Programming at Black Women

The NBWHP intentionally hosted workshops and self-help groups in community centers and neighborhood churches where Black women were more likely to feel safe talking about their sex lives. The NBWHP also recognized the importance of hair stylists and beauticians as a community center for Black women and organized educational workshops about HIV/AIDS for Black beauticians.

Placing HIV/AIDS Prevention Programming Where Black Women Feel Safe

In her vital signs piece, Dazon Dixion typified the NBWHP's approach to HIV/AIDS by stating that AIDS "has magnified all the social, political, health and economic problems that have plagued" Black people. The NWBHP understood that in many Black communities that AIDS was part of a larger picture of community survival rather than AIDS being an isolated priority the way it was for many white AIDS activist organizations. The NBWHP named that medical racism, healthcare access, reproductive justice, and the prison industrial complex are political issues in Black communities that intersect with the spread of HIV/AIDS.

The NBWHP's Work Connecting HIV/AIDS to Political Issues Central to Black Communities

The NBWHP worked to reduce the blame and normative moral claims made around HIV/AIDS. A lot of this work included addressing homophobia and views on drug use and sex work in the Black community. The NBWHP promoted a politicized understanding of HIV that did not blame people for their own disease and disablement. Destigmatization work served as the bridge between the NBWHP's prevention work and support work for individuals with HIV/AIDS.

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