NAESM exists to serve Black, gay and bisexual men. Full stop. This tenet has been central to the organization’s mission in the fight to reduce new HIV infections and to provide care for those living with HIV, including Atlantans who do not exist within the targeted group for over 30 years. It’s with the same laser focus on Black, gay and bisexual men, one of the most heavily impacted groups by HIV, that NAESM’s African American MSM Leadership Conference on Health Disparities and Social Justice, the nation’s largest annual convening dedicated to exploring HIV prevention, care, treatment, policy, and research, will escape the cold of the Southeast in January for the warmth of sunny Los Angeles. 

The annual conference is an opportunity for NAESM through advocacy, services, and education to provide local and national leadership on a plethora of health issues facing Black, gay and bisexual men. With dozens of similar conferences occurring throughout the year, Dr. Alvan Quamina, NAESM’s Executive Director, says there is one thing that attendees value that separates NAESM’s conference from all others. 

“I, too, remember coming to NAESM conferences as the conference where it was us,” Quamina says. “You would find us in all the other conferences. We'd be there. We'd be present. But we'd be surrounded by lots of women and lots of straight men. You go to a NAESM conference and it was just us—a few allies—but Black gay [and bisexual] men. And that was very affirming for me.”

After going completely virtual in 2020, the 4-day conference is scheduled to be in person with strict COVID-19 guidelines, including vaccination, on-site testing, and mask requirements. 

“Registrants are required to be vaccinated. The expectation is 100% masking, 100% of the time when we’re in sessions. We’re also going to have sanitizing stations for cleaning,” Quamina says. “And we're reserving the right to ask people to test for whatever reason, which is for everybody’s safety.” 

Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, CDC’s Director of the Division of HIV/AIDS Prevention, will deliver the keynote address during the 2022 conference. Quamina tells The Reckoning that he hopes the convening of a federal panel during the conference to strategize around ending the HIV epidemic will be contextualized in the age of COVID-19. 

“I am determined in this conference to make the connection between our ability to come up with COVID vaccines—plural—that are on the street in less than a year, and our inability so far to come up with a single HIV vaccine that has hit the street. It seems to me that we should have probably learned how to get it done,” he says. 

Together For A Cause 

The need for an HIV vaccine 40 years into the epidemic along with an increase in new acquisitions of HIV, specifically among Black, gay and bisexual men in the South, was the catalyst for Quamina to leave California and his former position as Section Chief of the City of Berkley’s public health division in 2019 to lead NAESM. 

“I read a quote from an anonymous CDC official saying that the epidemic in Atlanta among Black, gay and bisexual men was comparable to the epidemic in sub-Saharan Africa,” Quamina says. “And that was it. That was the statement. I was like, oh no you don't, there's no way that you can make a statement like that unattributed and not follow it up immediately with, and here's what we're doing about it. It makes no sense to me for a public official to put out a comparison like that and not follow it up with a commitment and a strategy.” 

It was all Quamina said he needed to hear. 

“I can come to Atlanta and help with that. And I pulled up that thing and applied,” he says. 

Quamina says he wanted the position despite being aware of the damage to NAESM’s brand by former leadership, according to his recollection of the perception many partner organizations within the Black LGBTQ+ and health communities had of NAESM. 

“I had expected to have to struggle with the board and particularly with the founder,” says Quamina.  

“I really expected a tug of war. And I did not get that. I think my age helped. I’m older than a lot of the people that preceded me that had those struggles. So, I think there was a presumption of competence that's not often always afforded to other people. When there was discomfort, it was at the top. But it did not seem to trickle down to the frontline staff level. And I found a very similar thing nationally,” he says. 

Travii Walker, a NAESM Community Health Outreach worker since 2019, is one of those front-line staff members Quamina is referring to. The gender non-conforming Chicago native moved to Atlanta in 2018 after being diagnosed with HIV the prior year. Walker is actively involved in day-to-day operations and will be present for the leadership conference. If Quamina offers the technical expertise and leadership, Walker offers the heart, especially when dealing with newly diagnosed clients at NAESM’s drop-in center. 

“I try to not make the client feel like a number. I know when I was tested and my result came back, it was just like, ‘Yeah, you're HIV positive. So do you want me to sign you up?’ There was no sympathy or anything like that. There was no consoling. It was just kinda straightforward,” Walker says. “And sometimes we need a friend at that moment. I said if I ever got into this field because I didn't have that during that time, I want to be that friend at that moment to somebody.”

And for many conference attendees, the annual gathering feels like a 4-day hug from a friend you don’t see regularly, but when you reconnect, it’s as if no time has passed. 

“Lots of people say things to me, like, ‘NAESM, that's the first conference I ever went to.’ ‘Oh, it changed my life.’ ‘The reason I'm in this work is because of NAESM,’” says Quamina, in a tone that expresses his awareness of the responsibility he holds as executive director. 

“I think of my job as two-fold: One is to address the HIV epidemic in Atlanta. To really try to have an impact together with other people, because no one person can do this, but to try to galvanize, catalyze, and have an impact. The other, though, is about this organization, and those to me are two separate things. So here's a Black gay men's organization and we're losing them left, right, and center, and I'll be damned if I let one more of our organizations go down the tube,” Quamina says. 

For both Walker and Quamina, being able to occupy space with other Black, gay, and bisexual men to create solutions to an epidemic that is a persistent threat to the health and well-being of their community is invaluable. 

“Walking into a room filled with Black, gay, and bisexual men—that part alone was overwhelming for me because we were all together for a cause. We made sure the people that came to the conference were engaged from sunup to sundown,” Walker says. “I walked out of there with a notebook filled with notes. There was so much information that I wanted to take away from it. A NAESM conference is something to experience.”

You can learn more about registration for the National African MSM Leadership Conference on Health Disparities and Social Justice in Los Angeles, CA, on January 13-16, 2022 here.