The mission of the Pittsburgh AIDS Task Force (PATF) is to support and empower all individuals living with HIV/AIDS and prevent the spread of infection. In just four years, PATF has launched three unique prevention programs aimed primarily at African-Americans throughout the region. As a result, PATF has reached thousands of people and has received national acclaim for its efforts.

In December 2011, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) published these statistics about HIV/AIDS in America:

• 1.2 million people are living with HIV in the U.S.

• Nearly one in five people living with HIV (about 240,000) don’t know they are infected.

• In 2009, there were an estimated 48,100 new HIV infections, with most (61 percent) occurring in gay and bisexual men.

An African American woman learns that she is HIV-positive at the same time she learns that her sickly 2-year-old son has AIDS. Having accepted Christ a few years earlier, she fears her church family will find out and reject her. A young African American man shares how most of his mother’s friends stopped coming over to her house and no longer invited her to theirs once they learned that he had AIDS and had moved back home to get help with his care. “They acted as if she could give it [AIDS] to them just by my being in her house. They stayed away from her because of me.”

Prostate cancer is the second leading cause of male cancer-related death in the United States, with an estimated 35,000 new cases occurring in African American men in 2011. African American men are at special risk for the disease and have the highest rate of prostate cancer in the world. The American Cancer Society estimates that one in five African American men will get prostate cancer at some time in their lives. The chances of getting prostate cancer increase if you have a close relative (for example, a father or brother) with the disease.