WASHINGTON, Jan. 16 /U.S. Newswire/ -- Gary A. Puckrein, Ph.D., executive director of the National Minority Health Month Foundation used a Capitol Hill Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day address to the First Ladies Summit to discuss the challenges in medical care for America for African Americans and other minorities, particularly those living with . Dr. Puckrein called on Congress to make changes to the Ryan White CARE Act during its reauthorization to better address the realities of HIV/AIDS in America today.

Recent patterns in the United States show that HIV/AIDS increasingly affects African Americans, Hispanics, and other racial and ethnic minorities. In 2004, minorities accounted for almost three-fourths of new cases of AIDS in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (  HIV/AIDS Surveillance Report. Of newly identified AIDS patients, 49 percent were African Americans and 20 percent were Latinos. The rate also continued to rise among women, who accounted for 27 percent of new AIDS cases in 2004. Of women newly diagnosed with AIDS, 64 percent were African Americans and 18 percent were Latinas.

In his remarks, Dr. Puckrein emphasized the importance of the modernization of the Ryan White (CARE) Act in 2006. "These facts are disheartening, and they highlight the need for a modernized Ryan White CARE Act," said Dr. Puckrein. "It's not enough just to renew the program. Congress has to make it better and more responsive to the totality of the need," he continued. He called those assembled to mobilize grassroots efforts across the U.S. to tell Congress that the Ryan White CARE Act must be modernized.

The CARE Act's current focus on legacy communities -- many of which are large, densely populated centers, such as New York City -- leaves treatment needs underserved in states such as Alabama, North Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, South Carolina, Mississippi and elsewhere in the country, where incidence and prevalence of HIV/AIDS are increasing among minority and non- minority populations. "If you are HIV positive and you live in North Carolina and you aren't sick enough to qualify for Medicaid, you'd better have excellent health insurance," Dr. Puckrein told the group.

"The men and women struggling to live with HIV/AIDS while they are losing access to treatment shouldn't be told to wait another five years, if they can survive that long, for Washington politicians to get their act together," said Dr. Puckrein.

Dr. Puckrein spoke during the Minority Health Session of the 2006 First Ladies Summit. The First Ladies Summit is a 3-day event, hosting 75 pastors' wives of the largest, most influential African-American religious leaders in the United States from various denominations. They come together in unity to celebrate women in leadership and discuss issues of particular interest to their communities. The First Ladies Summit was developed by Rev. Shelley Henderson in 2004, while she was Deputy Associate Director in the White House Office of Public Liaison.

 Department of Health and Human Services and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation in 2001, Dr. Puckrein undertook the Zip Code Analysis Project, a comprehensive database that links vital statistics, prescription drug, clinical laboratory values, and health care access points into one centralized data warehouse.

Copies of Dr. Puckrein's remarks are available by contacting Cleve Mesidor at 202-223-7560 or cmesidor@americanvisions.com .

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About the National Minority Health Month Foundation

Founded as a nonprofit organization in 1998, the National Minority Health Month Foundation was established to strengthen national and local efforts to eliminate the disproportionate burden of premature death and preventable illness in racial and ethnic minorities and other special populations through the use of evidence-based, data-driven initiatives. The Foundation has developed a comprehensive relational data platform for identifying the prevalence of health-status and health-care disparities at the zip-code level. This centralized data warehouse allows the Foundation to house vital statistics; demographic, environmental, claims, prescription-drug, and clinical-laboratory values; health-care access points, and other data. The Foundation is thus able to measure and forecast health status in small geographic areas, evaluate the impact of specific interventions, monitor changes in health outcomes, and serve as a valuable resource for the health-disparities movement.