Dionne Warwick reflects on her commitment to fighting AIDS: “Friends are the ones who are there for you.”

Few singers in Earth have as many hits as Dionne Warwick.

She enjoyed such 60s chart-toppers as Do You Know the Way to San Jose, Walk On By, Anyone Who Had a Heart, I Say a Little Prayer, Alfie and I’ll Never Fall in Love Again then in the late 70s and 80s hit it big again with Heartbreaker, I’ll Never Love This Way Again, Deja Vu, Love Power and That’s What Friends Are For, among others.

Friends won Grammys for Warwick and her singing partners Gladys Knight, Elton John and Stevie Wonder and the single’s proceeds raised more than $3 million for the American Foundation for AIDS Research (AmFAR).

Miss Warwick recently sat down with HIV Plus magazine to talk about her decades of AIDS activism. Here are some excerpts:

“I’m a performer. The industry I am in has lost a multitude of talented people,” says Warwick, who lost her assistant to AIDS in the 1980s before the disease even had a name.  “That’s when I had a very strong message sent to me to stop talking and start doing, and as a result of it, my advocacy started getting known throughout the country.”

Today, Warwick’s advocacy continues in communities like Harlem, where she works to educate young African-Americans who are hit particularly hard by the HIV/AIDS pandemic. When asked her thoughts on the cause of the disproportionate impact, she responds, “Economics, nothing more than that.” Still, she said that services have multiplied and improved over the years, continuing, “…there was no place for African-Americans to go, which give me even more strength to combat this thing.”

Some things, however, have not changed for the singer, whose career now spans five decades. “Lyrically, it’s the same message of I’m going to be there for you,” Warwick says. “Friends are the ones who are there for you. That’s exactly what this is all about. Being human. Having humanity.”

Here is a LINK to the complete article.