National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day: a time for action on many fronts

National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day: a time for action on many fronts

Today, February 7, is National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day. The day, observed annually since 1999, highlights the importance of HIV prevention, routine testing, and early care for a population still disproportionately affected by the disease. Here’s what to know about HIV in the Black community.Black Americans accounted for about 38 percent of HIV diagnoses among people aged 13 or older in the U.S. in 2023, the latest year for which data is ava…

There’s A Stigma Black Women Live With — It’s Time We Talk About It

Still Here is on a mission to re-center the voices and experiences of Black women who have been disproportionately impacted by HIV and AIDS.

HIV in the Black Community: Shifting from Stigma and Health Inequalities to Communication and Care Initiatives

Alftan Dyson, PharmD, AAHIVP, FNPhA, discusses the significance of Black HIV/AIDS Awareness day as well as the importance of taking the discussion around HIV prevention and sexual health out into the communities to have those conversations.

We Are Still Here: Black Power, HIV Justice, and the Work Ahead

On National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day, we honor the lives, leadership, and legacy of Black people who have shaped the HIV response in this country, often in the face of profound neglect, hostility, and loss. This moment demands honesty. We are living through a political climate marked by coordinated attacks on public health, civil rights, bodily autonomy, and the institutions meant to protect us. Harm reduction is under siege. HIV prevention …

Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day Defies Persistent Gaps in Care, Prevention

This weekend, communities nationwide will mark Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day, or NBHAAD, during an urgent time for people living with the disease and those who support them.  More than four decades after the epidemic began, Black Americans continue to receive a disproportionate share of new HIV diagnoses. Despite lifesaving medical developments over the past 30 years, Black people still face structural and societal barriers that make prevention, …

Black Women's HIV Prevention: Shifting Focus From Fear to Pleasure

This Black HIV/AIDS Day, the conversation about HIV will inevitably turn to “risk.” For Black women in America, this word has become a heavy, suffocating cloak.  It’s statistically true — Black women accounted for 50% of new HIV diagnoses among cisgender women, despite making up only about 14% of the female population. Here in Maryland, the reality is even more concentrated. The state is a critical front in this fight, being home to three Ending…