African American Clergy Perspectives About the HIV Care Continuum: Results From a Qualitative Study in Jackson, Mississippi

<p>Mississippi has some of the most pro­nounced racial disparities in HIV infection in the country; African Americans com­prised 37% of the Mississippi population but represented 80% of new HIV cases in 2015. Improving outcomes along the HIV care continuum, including linking and retaining more individuals and enhancing adherence to medication, may reduce the disparities faced by African Americans in Mississippi. Little is understood about clergy’s views about the HIV care continuum. We assessed knowledge of African American pastors and ministers in Jackson, Mississippi about HIV and the HIV care continuum. We also assessed their willingness to promote HIV screening and biomedical prevention technologies as well as efforts to enhance linkage and retention in care with their congregations. Four focus groups were conducted with 19 African American clergy. Clergy noted pervasive stigma associated with HIV and believed they had a moral imperative to promote HIV awareness and testing; they provided recommendations on how to normalize conversations related to HIV testing and treatment. Overall, clergy were willing to promote and help assist with linking and retaining HIV positive individu­als in care but knew little about how HIV treatment can enhance prevention or new biomedical technologies such as pre-expo­sure prophylaxis (PrEP). Clergy underscored the importance of building coalitions to promote a collective local response to the epidemic. The results of this study highlight important public health opportunities to engage African American clergy in the HIV care continuum in order to reduce racial disparities in HIV infection. <em></em></p><p><em>Ethn Dis.</em>2018; 28(2): 85-92; doi:10.18865/ed.28.2.85.</p>

Black Theologies

Black theology burst onto the scene in the late 1960s as a new cohort of progressive African American clergy and seminarians responded to the imperative of a burgeoning black freedom movement and global anticolonial struggles. Taken collectively, their work championed a distinctive black theological tradition, birthed in the context of enslavement and transmitted through independent black churches, which placed primacy on God’s preferential and emancipatory activity on behalf of the poor and oppressed. This chapter traces the origins, development, and legacy of black theology over three consecutive generations, identifying important debates related to the discipline’s defining motifs, methods, and approaches as well as the emergence of alternative paradigms, including womanist theology and African American humanism.