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Health Center offers free HIV testing

The UH Health Center will offer free confidential and anonymous HIV testing to all students, faculty and staff Wednesday as part of National HIV Testing Day.

The UH College of Pharmacy has recently initiated the Institute of Community Health, which seeks to raise awareness of HIV and AIDS to the campus community.

"The overall goal of the ICH is to create an interdisciplinary research environment where investigators can conduct basic, clinical and translational research that will advance knowledge in the field of community health, promote health and prevent diseases," UH Associate Professor of Health Promotion and Behavioral Sciences E. James Essein said in a release.

Minorities, in particular, have a high incidence of contracting the disease, according to the Center for Disease Control Web Site. Approximately 49 percent of blacks have HIV or AIDS, while 18 percent of Hispanics and 31 percent of whites were diagnosed in 2005.

"Texas remains as one of the states with a high incidence and prevalence of HIV/AIDS among ethnic minorities, namely African-Americans and Hispanics," Essein said.

Essein also said that the ICH will promote cooperation between UH, University of Connecticut, University of Texas at Austin, University of Wyoming and the Texas Medical Center so that programs may be enacted to help prevent or cure diseases that affect minorities in large numbers.

"There are a few institutions locally that are conducting studies on minority health issues, including HIV," Essein said.

The National Institutes of Health, the CDC and private donations fund the ICH.

Approximately 1 million people in the U.S. live with HIV, while one-fourth are not aware of having contracted the disease, according to the CDC.

AIDS is an advanced state of HIV in which the body is weakened by a series of afflictions resulting from a severely damaged immune system.

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