E-Mail This Article to a Friend SHOE IN Walking to fight AIDS BY DEIRDRE FULTON

During the 20 years since the Boston-based AIDS Action Committee’s first pledge walk, the face of HIV and AIDS has changed. Today, people realize that HIV/AIDS is not restricted to gay men — in fact, women of color are contracting an increasing proportion of infections. (In Massachusetts, more than 75 percent of new female diagnoses between 2000 and 2002 were among women of color.) Society has also become less afraid of the disease: "By and large, people have stopped blaming persons living with HIV/AIDS for being infected, and there is much less fear and hysteria over transmission of HIV from casual contact in the school or the workplace," says Dr. Daniel Kuritzkes, director of AIDS research at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. And though a cure remains elusive, today’s drug regimens can prolong lives.

At the same time, those medications have "had the paradoxical effect of making AIDS seem like a ‘normal’ treatable disease," Kuritzkes adds. "This attitude leads to greater risk-taking behavior on the part of some individuals at risk for HIV infection, and also dampens public support for funding of AIDS care and research."

In other words, until we find a cure, prevention and education are the only tools to stop the epidemic, which has killed more than 500,000 people in the United States since the first case was diagnosed here, in 1981. That’s why AIDS Action Committee (AAC) executive director Rebecca Haag warns against complacency. "It was very dramatic, in the early years, when people were dying," she says. "Now, fortunately, people are living with HIV — but their neighbors might not know it, their families might not know it. There’s not that physical symbol for people.... The disease is still here, it just looks different.

"Let’s eradicate the disease," she continues. "Let’s not pass this on to another generation."

To that end, AIDS Action is continuing its existing prevention programs and adding a few more — including a brand-new Men’s Action Life Empowerment (MALE) Center in the South End for gay and bisexual men, and a prevention program geared toward women of color — all while fighting debilitating state-budget cuts that have drained many AIDS-education programs for young people and the general public.

"When we started telling people to use condoms back in the ’80s, we were kind of confident we would have this thing licked," says Benjamin Perkins, director of the new MALE Center. But the prevention movement’s failure highlights the recurring need to "go back to the drawing board," which is what Perkins’s team will try to do in their efforts to reduce risky behaviors. The MALE Center will offer rapid testing (about one-third of HIV-positive people don’t know they are infected) and personal risk-management counseling. Most important, the center will go into the community to figure out which prevention strategies work best. "It’s critical to understand all the factors that underpin decision-making," Perkins says, citing substance abuse and low self-esteem among gay men as two of those factors. "There’s a lot more to prevention than a condom."

That’s all the more reason to put on our walking shoes.

This year’s 10K AIDS Walk and 5K Run will take place Sunday, June 5. Registration begins at 8:30 a.m. at the Hatch Shell. There will be a health fair at the Hatch Shell following the event. Visit www.aidswalkboston.org or call (617) 424-WALK for more information.