Model AIDS Program Housed in African-American Church

On April 20, an HIV testing, prevention, and referral center opened in specially constructed facilities inside the Antioch Baptist Church in Cleveland, Ohio. Its founders hope this program will become a national model for addressing the very serious problems of HIV disease among African Americans--problems which community leaders and media as well have often ignored. In the U.S., African Americans are far more likely than whites to be HIV positive; the epidemic is growing very rapidly among African Americans, and they often have poor access to medical care.

This new project, called the AGAPE Program, developed remarkably quickly as a collaboration between different institutions: the Antioch Baptist Church, a leading religious institution in the area; the Cleveland Clinic Foundation, a major medical center; the AIDS Task Force of Greater Cleveland; the local chapter of the American Red Cross; and two pharmaceutical companies, Bristol-Myers Squibb and Agouron Pharmaceuticals, which provided start-up grants. Organizing started only seven months ago, when Antioch's pastor, Rev. Marvin McMickle, Ph.D., talked with a church member who has AIDS, and then met with leaders of the Church, the Clinic Foundation, and the Red Cross; but the program now has an HIV facility newly constructed for this purpose inside a large room within the church building--including counseling rooms, a teaching center, and a large and well-equipped childcare facility so that children can be attended while their mothers visit. This center does not provide medical treatment beyond HIV testing, but refers clients to several medical facilities in the area.

We visited the Agape Program on April 20 and asked what had been learned which could help others to develop similar programs. Kelvin Berry, a deacon of the church who coordinated the steering committee which brought the project together, said that organizers should be aware of the following:

Don't try to pull the partners together too quickly--to force personalities to work together. Instead, organizers spent about two months to understand what each partner wanted--the church, the medical clinic, the pharmaceutical companies, and others.

It was essential to find people who could lead the process. Here, it was agreed that the church and the clinic would take the organizational lead. In addition, someone within each organization had to commit themselves to leading internally, to bringing others along.

The steering committee opened and closed every meeting in prayer, to help people come together on one central mission, reducing the conflicts which could result from conflicting egos of the very different personalities. "For the Antioch Baptist Church, our primary focus was the ministry, being led by Christ to help those who have trouble helping themselves," said Berry.


For More Information

For more information about the Agape Program, contact The Antioch Baptist Resource Center at 216-791-0638

The Balm In Gilead, Inc., is a national nonprofit organization whose mission is "to work through Black churches to stop the spread of HIV/AIDS in the African American community and to support those infected with, and affected by, HIV/AIDS." For more information, call toll-free 888-225-6243.

In San Francisco, the Glide-Goodlett HIV/AIDS Project offers testing, prevention case management, HIV case management, street outreach, and health education in the jails; also, non-HIV programs at the Glide Memorial United Methodist Church can help with housing, food, clothing, and transportation. Most of the clients are from the Tenderloin (by far the poorest neighborhood in the city), and most are African-American or members of other minority groups; for more information, call Joan Benoit at 415-567-2273. Glide Church also runs a Free Health Clinic (in partnership with the UCSF School of Nursing, and Catholic Healthcare West), and many other services, usually not HIV-specific; for information, see http://www.glide.org.