Leaders of the National Minority AIDS Council will take their campaigned to Capitol Hill yesterday to gain support for new strategies in combating the AIDS epidemic.

As the international community observed World AIDS Day on Dec. 1, NMAC hosted a reception for Congressional leaders and present a study with five key recommendations to decrease the health disparities among blacks with HIV/AIDS.

“We must have a systematic approach to addressing the epidemic,” said Damon Dozier, NMAC's director of government relations and public policy. So many of the problems in society and in the black community are connected in some ways to the disparities among those with AIDS/HIV, he said.

“If you find poverty, you find HIV/AIDS. If you have lack of access to medical care, you find HIV/AIDS. If you have problems with substandard housing, you find HIV/AIDS,” said Dozier.

According to Dozier, congressional help and support, as well as the backing of leaders on the local and state level, is needed to address the recommendations in the report by Columbia University professor Robert Fullilove.

Those recommendations are:

? Eliminate the marginalization of, and stigma and discrimination against black gay and other men who have sex with men.

? Reduce the impact of incarceration as driver of new HIV infections.

? Reduce the role of injection drug use in sustaining the AIDS epidemic.

? Expand proven HIV prevention, diagnosis and care programs.

? Stabilize communities by increasing affordable housing.

Since the beginning of the HIV/AIDS epidemic 25 years ago, blacks have been over represented among those living and dying with AIDS, according to NMAC. The disease continues to affect blacks more than any other racial or ethnic group in the United States.

While blacks account for only 13 percent of the U.S. population, they account for more than half of all new HIV/AIDS cases. More than 200,000 blacks have died with AIDS, and at least a half of those living now with HIV are black.

“AIDS is a black disease, but people don’t want to accept that fact,” said Phill Wilson, executive director of the Black AIDS Institute. “The silence is killing us.”

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, blacks who test positive for HIV are seven times more likely to die from it than whites.

Black people represent more than 600,000 of the 1.1 million living with AIDS. “As black America goes, so goes America,” Wilson said.

HIV/AIDS activists have picked up key support in recent months throughout the black community, with leaders such as Rev. Jesse Jackson, Sen. Barack Obama, Julian Bond and the Rev. T.D. Jakes renewing their commitment to help fight the disease and raise community awareness.

The activists now say that the same support needs to catch on among all U.S. leaders, they say.