Unity Arc Advocacy Group

10/13/2026

What does "stable" actually mean in a healthcare system that wasn't built for you?

For a lot of people living with HIV, especially those navigating aging, housing instability, and fragmented care, stability in a data record means something very different from stability in real life.

Risk-stratification algorithms used in Medicaid managed care are designed to identify who needs proactive outreach. But they work primarily from claims data: appointments attended, procedures billed, prescriptions filled. They record what happened inside the system. They cannot see what the system missed.

A person who stops coming to appointments because their clinic closed isn't thriving. A person who avoids the ER because of a past experience with stigma isn't low-risk. But in a dataset, their absence registers as stability. No flag is triggered. No care coordinator calls.

Part 2 of The Crisis Nobody Is Naming looks at how this works, why it started long before AI, and why the organizations closest to this community often have no way to interrogate the tools making these decisions.

The piece also names what a real accountability standard would look like.

Read it at the link below and share with anyone working in community health, Medicaid managed care, or HIV services.

Legacy digital assessment tools — and now AI — are misclassifying aging PLHIV as low risk. Not because they are fine, but because fragmented care looks like stability in a dataset.

10/08/2026

The "medically frail" exemption for Medicaid work requirements was supposed to protect people with HIV.

Here's what they didn't tell us: the exemption requires not just a qualifying condition — but proof that the condition is actively interfering with your ability to work.

Early HIV treatment lets people work. That is now a liability, not a success story.

46 percent of all Americans living with HIV are on Medicaid. The deadline is January 1, 2027.

I wrote about this today in the Health Equity Monitor

The Medicaid work requirement exemption for people with HIV is narrower than anyone expected. The deadline is January 1.

10/07/2026

🚨HINAC7 Scholarship Nominees: Don't forget to submit your application!

If you've been nominated for a scholarship, your application is due OCTOBER 15!

Don't wait! Submit your application TODAY. Once the October 15 deadline passes, application will no longer be accepted.

10/07/2026

Read this today.

When the A Different World revival dropped on Netflix last month, the internet went straight for Jasmine Guy’s face. Her Breakfast Club interview gave us real things to talk about: colorism, what she said about her children, white folks in Black Greek organizations. That conversation deserved to happen.

Instead, we got before-and-after comparisons and comments about how she looks at 64.

Kadeem Hardison aged right alongside her. Nobody said a word.

Dr. Melina Abdullah wrote the piece we actually needed. Bravo to her for naming it.

Old is not ugly.

Explore Jasmine Guy's views on aging and race, challenging societal norms around beauty and aging for Black women in this thought-provoking article.

10/06/2026

New post is up on our Substack — and this one hits different.

"The Independence Test" starts with a number: only 16% of blind or low-vision AI users chose the AI tool over a human reader when it meant sharing their images with a tech company.

That's not resistance to technology. That's a completely rational response to a system that hasn't earned trust.

We also name something the research hasn't caught up to: there is no study that tells us what AI access looks like for a Black disabled person, or someone without a college degree, or a household where broadband costs what groceries cost. That intersection is invisible in the data.

Community AI Connect is being built to start changing that — in Atlanta, in the next few weeks.

Read it here:

For disabled people, AI’s promise is real. So are the conditions that make it break.

10/04/2026

5 Things Telehealth Still Gets Wrong for Underserved Communities

Telehealth expanded access for millions. I believe in its potential. But for the communities I work with — the ones already furthest from care — the gap didn't close. It shifted.

Here are 5 things telehealth platforms still get wrong:

1. Assuming everyone has a smartphone with reliable data
2. Building video-first when voice calls are more accessible
3. Skipping language access and plain-language interfaces
4. Ignoring the privacy needs of people in shared or unstable housing
5. Designing for the "average" patient instead of the most complex one

Digital equity in health isn't about giving everyone the same tool. It's about building tools that work for the hardest situations first.

Which of these has your organization run into?

09/30/2026

AI is showing up in more places in health care — appointment scheduling, symptom checkers, insurance decisions, even diagnosis support. That's not automatically bad. Done right, it can genuinely help.

But this month, four separate reports — on testing standards, data privacy, health equity, and who actually has access to your data — all pointed to the same gap: most of these systems aren't being checked the way they should be, and most people don't get a say.

Our ask is simple: before any AI tool touches your care, there should be a public plan showing it was tested with people like you, that it works fairly, and that a real person is still reachable if something goes wrong.

Have you run into an AI tool at your doctor's office, pharmacy, or insurance company? We'd like to hear what that was like — good or frustrating.

09/11/2026

Black communities did not simply survive the early years of the AIDS crisis. We organized, cared for one another, challenged institutions, and built the support systems that too often did not exist for us.

This article is an important reminder that community care was never secondary to the HIV response. It was essential to our survival.

As a Black man living and aging with HIV, I do not read this as distant history. In a recent interview, I reflected on how our focus has evolved from surviving uncertainty to living full lives shaped by love, partnership, community, and possibility.

But progress does not reach everyone equally. Aging with HIV looks different for every person. People are navigating careers, relationships, family, health, and new chapters of life while defining what wellness means for themselves.

At Unity Arc Advocacy Group, I am carrying this work forward through my leadership with the U.S. PLHIV Caucus and continued advocacy with the Coalition. We are working to ensure that lived experience shapes policy, HIV laws reflect science rather than stigma, and people living and aging with HIV remain central to every decision affecting our lives.

We have extraordinary science. What we have not yet built is equal access, trust, and the political will to ensure everyone benefits from it.

Our history shows us where to begin: listen to the community, invest in its leadership, and never treat people living with HIV as an afterthought.

Read the article:
https://www.advocate.com/african-americans/black-communiites-hiv-aids-crisis

Fighting against an illness with no treatment and institutional racism, Black q***r communities had to look inward for support.

09/11/2026

Do you (or someone you know) want to apply for a scholarship? It's as easy at 1-2-3!

1️⃣Get a community member to nominate you.
2️⃣Receive an application link.
3️⃣Submit the application.

🔗Nomination Form: https://tinyurl.com/HINAC7Nom

For more information, link in comments.👇

09/07/2026

Atlanta is Celebrating Black Gay Pride and the celebration is amazing. But as we welcome all of these beautiful people to Atlanta; as we begin the month of September, we at Unity Arc focus on
September 18 is National HIV/AIDS and Aging Awareness Day.

We keep returning to a simple truth: viral suppression is essential, but it cannot be our only measure of success.

More than half of people living with diagnosed HIV in the United States are now age 50 or older. A new Lancet HIV Commission calls on health systems to move beyond virus-focused care and address the full realities of aging: multiple medications, frailty, mental health, mobility, social connection, financial strain, and the ability to remain independent.

People living with HIV fought for the chance to grow older. Our responsibility now is to make sure those added years carry dignity, community, choice, and quality of life.

Success is not only more years lived. It is more life in those years.

Sources:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/42508440/
https://www.hiv.gov/events/awareness-days/aging