Interview: Debra Fraser-Howze

This interview with Board Member Debra Fraser-Howze took place on February 7th, National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day. As founder and former CEO and President of the National Black Leadership Commission on AIDS in the late 1980s, Ms. Fraser-Howze helped create this day of commemoration. The NBLCA was one of four organizations to ensure February 7th as the first day of remembrance focused on any ethnic community and remains to be one of the things Ms. Fraser-Howze is most proud of.

What excites you about NYCAM’s mission?

It’s going to allow us to tell a history of an important epidemic that impacted this city, this country and the world in a way that no other epidemic has. It is important to me that we record our history and the truth about our history in this epidemic because people must have an opportunity to learn from both their failures and successes so they don’t repeat the failures and can build on the success.

Tell us a little about your history with the epidemic.

In the early 1980s I was the director of Youth and Social Welfare at the New York Urban League and I had a number of programs in every borough of the city. One was a teenage pregnancy program in four of the city’s boroughs. One of my directors called me and said she had a young man in her office who tested HIV positive and he had a two year old and another baby on the way. It hit me like a ton of bricks that if, at the time, condoms were the biggest barrier to infection, and these kids were all getting pregnant, they clearly weren’t using condoms.

I sent out a clarion call to black leaders across the city touching every borough that included clergy elected officials, social policy experts, business and media leaders, and told them that we had an emerging epidemic on our hands that we needed to address immediately because it would eventually destroy our families as we knew them – and that’s what it did. They all came together and we created the National Black Leadership Commission on AIDS.

The community did not want to own it, and at the same time they were being impacted in ways that were unimaginable…they refused to accept it and recognize it.

It was an uphill battle. No one in the black community believed that this was a black epidemic. They all saw it as a white gay male epidemic and it was very hard to break through that sigma and noise.

How do you think HIV is still affecting the black community?

We continue to be impacted. There is some good in that I doubt you could ask an African American now, “Do [you] know about AIDS?” and they would say they have no knowledge. They do know about AIDS; they know how to prevent contracting the disease.

Now it’s about fine-tuning that information to impact behaviors that will be lasting long enough for us to get out of this – to turn a corner on this epidemic.

What can be done to make a difference now? Beyond spreading awareness, but by perhaps changing behavior?

If we could find the magic bullet we would be a better society. You know, in light of the fact that we aren’t good at that with any virus, not even the common cold; we have to dig deeply to allow these communities to respond in their own way. You know I built an organization on the premise that the African American community was resilient, creative and resourceful, and that we would be able to figure an exit to this. The catch here is that for the most part, HIV is spread through sexual contact. That gets very difficult when you’re dealing with any group of human beings. I do believe that if you had a coordinated community response on the ground, that allows these communities to use their own culture, their norms, and provide them with enough resources, we will make headways. I think we have made some headway; we need to make a lot more and it needs to be a lot faster.

Who will you be remembering at the memorial?

Oh, so many. I have spent more than half my career in HIV and AIDS policy and advocacy. I have done everything from build an organization that responded to this epidemic…to purchasing a bed for a child who was orphaned because the mother and father passed away from AIDS… to standing at the bedside of young gay men, black and white, and unfortunately watching them die without the benefit of their loved ones around them. I will be remembering all of those people that I sat with, all of the mothers, fathers, the gay relatives I have that have passed on from this epidemic… all of the people that I’ve had the privilege and honor to work with – and I’m going to work hard for the memorial to do justice to their memory.

I also wish for the memorial to take on a look at the future. Where did this epidemic in New York sit within the global context? This epidemic worldwide has always been an epidemic of color. How do we learn from the rest of the world and how can New York, the greatest city in the world, give back in regards to this epidemic? I am now in corporate America where we actually develop products that save lives. I take great pride in being a part of the push to make those new inventions happen, and I’m hopeful that the memorial will be able to look at those issues as well. How the advocacy community fought to push fast tracks of these devices and medication, so that they could get to people and keep them alive longer.

I’m also hoping that we will remember those people who are still here, still living, and still fighting.