Number One No Longer
A Brief History of AIDS in New Haven

By Claudia Setubal

On April 8th, 2006, hundreds of people congregated on the New Haven Green to raise both awareness and money for local non-profit organizations that provide prevention and treatment services to AIDS patients in the area. AIDS Walk New Haven, a project headed by Yale AIDS Watch (YAW), just finished its second year. The initial impetus for the Walk came from a group of students who concluded that there was not enough being done to address New Haven’s AIDS crisis, and consequently decided to take action. Last year, the event attracted over 500 people who walked the five kilometers, listened to speakers, and donated over $38,000.

While the achievement is impressive, this most recent incarnation of AIDS Walk New Haven is surprisingly young. The 2005 AIDS Walk New Haven was the first one in twelve years. For years, AIDS walks have been high-profile events in cities with high rates of infection. San Francisco, for instance, celebrated its walk’s 20th anniversary in 2006. One would expect New Haven, which ten years ago had the nation’s highest rate of HIV per capita, to have upheld the tradition. Walks are public, colorful events that make a loud statement about the need to fight a disease that is often stigmatized.

And if last year is any indication, they are also very effective fundraisers. Why then has New Haven not sponsored a walk for the past 12 years, in an age where AIDS has proverbially come out of the closet? The answer may be left up to speculation, but the facts are these. Individual AIDS organizations began to appear in New Haven as the epidemic spread nationwide in the mid-1980s. At first, these advocacy groups were independent both of one another and of the government. Non-profit organizations such as AIDS Project New Haven, founded in 1983, began as volunteer organizations offering support for AIDS patients and their families because basic services such as free testing, counseling, and AIDS awareness campaigns were not provided by the government. At a time when the epidemic was still largely seen as a “gay plague,” the city had done little to improve the lives of AIDS patients, and responsibility for organizing a support network was left up to the patients themselves. Many of the early infections were diagnosed in homosexual men, and the stigma surrounding the disease continued throughout the 1980s.

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