LOS ANGELES – Former basketball star Magic Johnson's normally publicity-shy wife Cookie is emerging as a spokeswoman in a campaign urging black women to get tested for HIV.
Cookie Johnson is appearing with the former LA Lakers star in a five-year, $60 million public service campaign with ads directed by moviemaker Spike Lee.
She was two months pregnant when her husband tested positive for HIV in 1991.
The Henry J. Kaiser Foundation says almost a third of cases diagnosed among U.S. blacks in 2006 were women, double the rate for white women.
Cookie Johnson, who tested negative for the virus, says part of the community still has the attitude that "it can't happen to me."
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