Suzanne Africa Engo says AIDS is causing black women to be "an endangered species."

AIDS is a cause near and dear to Engo’s heart. She has been working to raise AIDS awareness since the age of 12, and plans to run from New York to Chicago in September to promote the New York AIDS Film Festival. She expects to finish the run in two months.

"For a lot of young black women, what’s putting them at risk is emotion," Engo, 29, told CNN. "Young women are going to men for security — you’re talking about a fatherless home and a girl looking for approval. That’s the kind of thing that puts them at risk."

AIDS is the leading cause of death among black women between 25 and 34, according to a report out this week by the Black AIDS Institute, while black women in the U.S. are 23 times more likely than white women to be diagnosed with AIDS. The report concluded, among other things, that while the United States leads the global response to HIV/AIDS, it fails to mobilize the same commitment to address the large and growing epidemic within its own borders.

"Were Black America a separate country, it would elicit major concern and extensive assistance from the U.S. government. Instead, the national response to AIDS among Black Americans has been lethargic and often neglectful," said Phill Wilson, CEO of the institute and one of the authors of the report.

Engo believes that poor health care in black communities, in both the U.S. and Africa, is a reason it has become an epidemic among this population.

"People with access to health care and drugs are living," she said.

Travers Johnson, a recent graduate of Morehouse College in Atlanta, GA, found that on college campuses, there are many myths surrounding AIDS and HIV – they don’t know enough about the testing procedures and how it’s a simple 20-minute process that involves no needles or blood. Nashawn Anderson interviewed her fellow students at Spelman College, a historically black women’s college in Atlanta, about preconceptions about AIDS.

"Put yourself first," one woman interviewed said. "A lot of people don’t use protection because their partner doesn’t want to use protection. But they need to think about it. If their partner really loves them, would they want to put them in that predicament?"