Health – The HIV Epidemic
The black community bears the greatest burden of the HIV
epidemic, more than any other racial or ethnic group. FACT -
African Americans account for 41 percent of all people
living with HIV and 44 percent of all new infections. Today
the HIV epidemic is one of the most pressing health issues
facing the Black community.
The Black Church & HIV initiative
was established to form a national network of faith leaders,
religious institutions, and community members committed to
making change and ending the HIV epidemic in black America.
There is an immediate need for Leaders in our community to
take action for what is happening with HIV in the black
community.
The National NAACP has
made the commitment to enlist faith leaders as change agents
to address the disparate and severe impact of HIV on African
Americans. As a high-risk population, African Americans are
more likely to progress from HIV to AIDS within one year of
being diagnosed with HIV and less likely to know they have
HIV or to seek treatment.
This threat to the
survival and well-being of our community is a social
injustice. HIV is impacting our community and it is our
responsibility to speak out and fight the systems that make
and keep us vulnerable to HIV infection. We invite you to
join our fight for a system that ensures that we all have
access to the information, insurance, prevention, care, and
treatment that we deserve.
The OPIOID Epidemic
Opioid abuse is a serious public health issue. Drug
overdose deaths are the leading cause of injury death in the
United States. You don’t hear as much about the HIV issues
in our community because of all the focus and hype on the
Opioid Epidemic. We should question the choices we are
offered for pain. We should challenge the medical
professionals who prescribe medications that cause
addictions. We as a community should educate ourselves and
our families on alternative methods to relieve pain and
depression.
Every day more than 90 Americans die after overdosing on
opioids. This is a serious national crisis that affects
public health as well as social and economic welfare. The
Center for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that the
total economic effect of prescription opioid misuse in the
United States alone is $78.5 billion a year, including the
cost of healthcare, lost productivity, addiction treatment,
and criminal justice involvement.
VOTING - Why Each
Individual Vote is Important….Popular Vote vs. Electoral
College!
We continue to remind you that “It’s your right to VOTE”!
Election period is over for now but we know that voting
rights and information gathering is a 365-day process.
Everyday is an opportunity to educate our community on
voting. In 2018 we will proceed with classes to educate you
on the intricacies of the voting process.
The process of selecting a president is a complicated one.
The constitution states the president, a single executive,
would serve an unlimited number of four-year terms, however
a constitutional amendment in 1951 limited the president to
two elected terms. In addition, the president would be
chosen neither by the Congress nor directly by the people.
Instead the Constitution provides for his/her selection by
an intermediary body called the Electoral College.
Because our founders feared giving too much power to the
electorate, we do not actually vote for the president and
vice president in presidential elections. Rather, we cast
our votes in November for electors (members of the Electoral
College), who in turn actually vote for the president. The
electors cast their votes for the candidates about six weeks
after the general election.
The Constitution provides for each state to have as many
electoral votes as it does senators and representatives in
Congress. There are 538 electoral votes in all; 270 are
needed to win the presidency.
The importance of the Electoral College is that all the
states but Maine and Nebraska operate on a winner-take-all
basis. Thus, the winner in Ohio, even if he or she has less
than a majority of the vote, wins all of the state’s 18
electoral votes. The loser in Ohio may have won 49 percent
of the popular votes, but he or she gets nothing in the
Electoral College.
It is possible, then, for the actual popular vote winner to
lose in the Electoral College. This is what happened in our
last general election. So you see each individual vote is
important as our cumulative votes determine the number of
electoral votes from our state.
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