We are making huge strides in preventing and managing HIV and AIDS over the last two decades. According to UNAIDS, new HIV infections decreased by over 50% since their peak in 1996.

In spite of the breakthroughs, these conditions continue to impact over a million people in the United States alone. Over 10 percent are not even aware of their status.

Further, these diseases still disproportionately affect certain populations. According to the CDC, in 2019, nearly 500,000 black or African American adults and teens were diagnosed with HIV, accounting for the highest prevalence rate among races or ethnicities. About 13% of them were undiagnosed before the pandemic.

Playing a huge role in the discrepancy is health inequality. For example, blacks and Latinos are still more likely to be uninsured than whites despite the Affordable Care Act (ACT).

The government, from the federal to the local, implements many policies and programs to bridge or even close the gap. But not all succeed because it lacks an essential component: an implementation process grounded on collaboration and a unified goal of breaking down barriers that support health inequality, such as structural racism.

To help us understand this point, I sat down with Dr. Megan Stanton, a social work assistant professor at Eastern Connecticut State University. She is also the director of research and evaluation at the Sustained Compass Coordinating Center.

Finally, she helped founded the Collective for Community Action, which champions implementation science in their work toward systemic transformation to eliminate health disparities.

To say that this conversation is deep and aspirational is an understatement. I strongly encourage you to sit down with us and listen.

• Know the definition of the normalization process
• Learn how being white benefits from the status quo, making it one of the biggest obstacles to change, and how race can turn everything around
• Unpack how addressing the power structure can spearhead and sustain intervention implementation
• Hear implementation "in action" through the work of the advocacy group

Megan Stanton, MSW, PhD (she/her) is the Director of Research and Evaluation at the SUSTAIN COMPASS Coordinating Center and an Assistant Professor of Social Work at Eastern Connecticut State University. She is a founding member of the Collective for Community Action which is a collective of healing-centered scholars, activists, and community members working in the field of HIV. Her research interests include equity centered implementation science, health justice and inequity, community-led and multilevel health interventions, and the implementation of trauma informed care and harm reduction approaches in HIV service organizations. She completed a PhD in Social Welfare at the University of Pennsylvania School of Social Policy and Practice and a Master of Social Work at the University of Connecticut. Dr. Stanton’s work is grounded in the ethics of community-based participatory research.

Social media for the Collective for Community Action:

Instagram: @collectiveforcommunityaction

https://www.instagram.com/collectiveforcommunityaction/

Facebook: @CollectiveforCommunityAction

​​https://www.facebook.com/CollectiveforCommunityAction/