By Jannell Ross

Around Atlanta, Gentry’s speeches — rife with the nitty-gritty and completely true stories of women infected with HIV collected over the course of her research career — are the stuff of legend. In no uncertain terms, Gentry, a sociologist who studies the way economic and social dynamics influence the spread of diseases such as HIV/AIDS, talks about the lifetime risk that black women — even those with decent incomes, houses, degrees, husbands and church homes — face of contracting HIV. Gentry’s stories are delivered along with epidemiological data, charts and graphs that all make one thing plain: Black women are in peril.

“You should see the faces,” said Gentry, the president and founder of Messages of Empowerment Productions, an Atlanta-based public health education company. “When they look stunned, I know that I may have reached them. What I bring, it’s not the story about sex workers and men on the down low that they’ve already grown used to hearing. What I talk about is the way that blind trust and silence, stuff that may be a part of their life, can be deadly.”

It turns out that shocking presentations like Gentry’s and a turnaround in federal HIV-prevention strategy that began near a decade ago may be saving lives. As the country marks National HIV Testing Day (click here to find a free HIV-testing location near you) today (June 27), officials with the nation’s chief health monitoring agency, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, say that something interesting and encouraging seems to be happening with black women and HIV.

For the first time in two decades, the number of new HIV infections reported among black women — a group bearing the brunt of one of the nation’s most disproportionately high HIV-infection rates — has declined. In fact, between 2008 and 2010, the most recent detailed data (pdf) available, the number of new infections among black women slid a full 21 percent.

Read More Black Women and HIV: A Decline in Infection Rates Brings Optimism.