Organization raises awareness of AIDS in community

Daniela Mohor

Friday, Oct. 12, 2001 | 4:28 a.m.

Sista To Sista will hold a conference on the effect of HIV and AIDS on the minority community Nov. 1 and 2 at Sam's Town. For more information, call (702) 838-7298.

One day, Beverly Caradine hopes, the women she works with won't look shocked when she tells them that they are 20 times more likely than others to contract AIDS.

One day, she hopes, black women will realize that they are not immune to the disease.

"On the onset of this epidemic," Caradine says, "there were no women infected." Today black women represent 42 percent of AIDS cases in Clark County, but only 7 percent of the population.

An educator at the nonprofit Sista to Sista, Caradine is one of the organization's five employees and many volunteers working to raise awareness about HIV and AIDS among Las Vegas' black women.

Created in 1998, the group started as a program to train black women to teach their peers about ways the immune-system disease are transmitted. That includes the well-known, such as unprotected sex and needle sharing, and those they may not think of, such as a husband's past sex partners.

The program now provides other services as well, such as an outreach to encourage women to get tested, assistance to get infected women medical care, and support for the emotional challenges those who test positive may face.

The organization's main goal still remains education.

"Information is not readily available in the community," said Dr. Reva Anderson, Sista to Sista's executive director and founder. "(The information) has been targeted to very specific groups ... The focus has been primarily on gay men, injection drug users, prostitutes, and incarcerated persons, but 33 percent of these women aren't in those cases."

To raise awareness, Sista to Sista holds seminars in schools, at housing projects and for other nonprofit groups. It also organizes an annual conference to discuss the effect of HIV on the minority community, coming up Nov. 1 and 2.

So far 140 women have graduated from the organization's training program. Some of them joined the class after taking advantage of Sista to Sista's services.

Among those graduates is a 27-year-old woman with HIV, who asked not to be identified. Diagnosed with HIV in 1995, the woman had not even told family or close friends that she was infected when she moved to Las Vegas two years ago. Shortly after her arrival, she found out she was pregnant with twins.

Sista to Sista helped her figure out what to do next, the woman said.

Today the woman is studying to become a network engineer. Both of her daughters are healthy, and her family knows her secret.

When the grandparents of the woman's twins asked her to leave their house, outreach coordinator Irene Battle not only referred her to agencies providing low-income housing, she went with her on appointments.

When the pregnant woman spent two months in the hospital after the babies were born prematurely, Battle visited her three times a week.

"I was new to this city and didn't know where to turn," the single mother said. "I know that if there wasn't an organization like this, I wouldn't be where I am right now."

Battle also guided her spiritually. She took the woman to church, introduced her to the pastor and supported her when she decided to be baptized.

"She needed a lot of attention and a lot of care, and I tried to give her what she needed," Battle said. "My children are in Chicago, so it was a chance for me to mother her."