 
September 8, 2009
David Lee: He uses the virus as motivation to make a difference.
by LaToya Johnson
Like so many positive people, David Lee discovered he had the virus after having a regular check-up. But Lee refused to be a victim. Testing positive for HIV motivated him to accomplish goals. One of them included getting a masters degree in public health and social work from the University of Washington. Since then, Lee used his education to fight the HIV/AIDS crisis in the African-American community.
What HIV/AIDS work have you done?
I worked as a HIV case manager at Seattle’s large outpatient clinic for about five years. I focused on engagement and enhance support for African-American patients. I’m also a licensed independent social worker with my own private practice in psychotherapy. Additionally, I serve as the chair of the Washington State Governor’s Advisory Council on HIV and AIDS. I work with the Northwest AIDS Education and Training Center (NW AETC) at the University of Washington, where we provide treatment education to medical providers. I do lots of training sessions on the West Coast in California, Oregon, and Washington, and at the U.S. Conference on AIDS and the African-American MSM Leadership Conference. I also worked with the HIV Vaccine Trials Network where I helped establish research sites in Puerto Rico, Brazil, Botswana and Peru.
What do you love about being an African-American AIDS advocate?
I instill hope in people and I feel like I can make a difference. It seems like a lot of people have followed the epidemic. Advocacy began in the gay community and now people are doing international work. But I feel like we still have a huge epidemic here in the U.S. in the African-American community. I had an opportunity to do international work and I did briefly, but I feel like I can make a difference right here at home.
What kind of feedback do you get from people who attend the training sessions?
When I give statistics at training sessions, people’s jaws drop because they don’t realize that HIV is so devastating in the African American community. Sometimes, the participants look at you like ‘Oh my God, I didn’t know.’ It makes you wonder where have they been. Folks don’t realize that African Americans are impacted so badly, especially African-American women and men who have sex with men (MSM).
Why do you think the virus disproportionately affects the African-American community?
Over the years, we’ve thought it was a number of things. We’ve attributed it to poverty, higher rates of substance use, higher rates of mental illness and a lack of healthcare access. But I think we’re learning that it has to do with social network. My current belief is that the main contributor to higher rates of HIV in the African-American community has to do with our closed social networks. You can tie that back to racism as an overarching theme because that reason is probably the factor that pushes us back into closed networks. Whether a person is heterosexual or homosexual they tend to have sex within their own community. Even though we know there’s overlapping, there are African Americans who have sex with whites or Latinos. But, in general, we’re a closed community. Since there’s a higher incidence of HIV already in our community that means there’s a huge probability the person you have sex with in your community is going to be HIV positive. I think it works the same way in the gay community with MSM because rates are high there too.
What advice would you give the African-American community about how to combat HIV/AIDS?
If you’re a person who is HIV positive, talk about it. Let people know. I feel like stigma is a big issue. A lot of people don’t feel like it impacts them until you let them know it does affect them. If I’m living with HIV or your neighbor down the street is living with HIV or your pastor is living with HIV, that impacts everyone in the community. I realize it’s not safe for everybody to go public and people have to determine that for themselves. But my advice would be to just start opening up and educate yourself. Even those who are HIV negative need to come out and publicly disclose their status.
How do people respond when you tell them your status?
When I tell people I’m HIV positive the first thing they want to know is how I got the virus. The question implies that I got it by doing something evil or bad. But my response to that is that I got it by being human and doing human things. Getting HIV doesn’t have anything to do with being a bad or an awful person. HIV happens to human beings even though there things you can do to reduce your risk. You still get it by being human doing human things.
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