In the tradition of J. Anthony Lukas and Randy Shilts, journalist Jacob Levenson has woven the stories of doctors, social workers, activists, policy makers, researchers, and people living with HIV and their families in The Secret Epidemic: The Story of AIDS and Black America (Pantheon, 2004). In considering how AIDS eventually became a predominantly black epidemic in the United States over the past 25 years, Levenson explores the intersections among public health, crack cocaine, sexuality, the black church, urban America, and the battle for civil rights. The book promises to reframe the national discussion about AIDS and help inspire debate that will transform the conversation about race in America. Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. wrote, "The importance of this book at this critical juncture cannot be underestimated."

At a panel discussion in OSI's New York offices, Levenson discussed some of the particularly complex issues involved in conceptualizing and writing The Secret Epidemic as well as his observations on race, politics, and social structures. He was joined on the panel by a couple that is featured prominently in the book: OSI Individual Project Fellow Mindy Fullilove, one of the first black researchers to investigate the black epidemic and the author of the forthcoming Root Shock: How Tearing Up City Neighborhoods Hurts America, and What We Can Do About It (Ballantine Books, 2004), and Robert E. Fullilove, who is the associate dean for community and minority affairs and a professor of clinical sociomedical sciences at the Mailman School of Public Health of Columbia University. The Fulliloves co-direct the Community Research Group at the New York State Psychiatric Institute and Columbia University.

The discussion was moderated by journalist Michael Massing, a frequent contributor to the New York Review of Books and other publications and the contributing editor of the Columbia Journalism Review. He is author of The Fix (Simon & Schuster, 1998), a book on America's failed drug war.

Read a summary of the forum.