National Latinx AIDS Awareness Day

Find out how you can do your part to promote HIV prevention and treatment and help fight stigma.

National Latinx AIDS Awareness Day* (NLAAD), coordinated by the Latino Commission on AIDS, is October 15. The observance is an opportunity to promote HIV testing, prevention, and treatment in Hispanic/Latino communities, working towards the shared goal of a world free of new HIV infections. This year’s theme, Ending HIV Is Everyone’s Job, emphasizes the tools available to address HIV in all communities. It challenges each of us to learn more about HIV, prevent new infections, help people with HIV stay healthy, and work together to end this disease that disproportionately affects Hispanics/Latinos in the United States and 6 dependent areas.

Hispanics/Latinos represent nearly 18% of the total population of the United States, but accounted for 26% of the 40,324 new HIV diagnoses in 2016 in the United States and 6 dependent areas. New HIV diagnoses among Hispanic women/Latinas decreased 14% from 2011 to 2015 and remained stable among Hispanics/Latinos overall. Although these trends show progress for some Hispanics/Latinos, new HIV diagnoses increased 13% among Hispanic/Latino gay and bisexual men during the same period.

You have an important role to play in making sure all Hispanics/Latinos know their HIV status and have access to the latest prevention and treatment options. As we observe NLAAD, find out how you can do your part to promote HIV prevention and treatment and help fight stigma.

October 15 is National Latinx AIDS Awareness Day. Let’s Stop HIV Together is a national campaign that raises awareness that we all have a role to play in stopping HIV stigma.

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Visit CDC’s Act Against AIDS website for more information about National Latinx AIDS Awareness Day on October 15.

What can everyone do?

Get the facts. Learn about HIV testing, treatment, and prevention, and share this information with partners, family, and friends in your communities.

Get tested. CDC recommends that everyone between the ages of 13 and 64 get tested for HIV at least once as part of routine health care and those at high risk get tested at least once a year. Some sexually active gay and bisexual men may benefit from more frequent testing (every 3 to 6 months).

To find a testing site near you visit Get Tested; text your ZIP code to KNOWIT (566948); or call 1-800-CDC-INFO (232-4636). You can also use a home testing kit available in drugstores or online.

If you know you are HIV-negative, the following activities are highly effective and can help keep you from getting HIV:

• Using condoms the right way every time you have anal or vaginal sex. Check out the condom locator to find condoms near you.
• Taking medicine to prevent HIV (pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP) if you are HIV-negative and at high risk for getting the virus. Use the PrEP locator to find a PrEP provider in your area.
• Never sharing syringes or other equipment or works to inject drugs (for example, cookers).
• Abstinence (not having sex) and not sharing syringes or works are 100% effective ways to make sure you won’t get HIV from sex or injecting drugs.

The following actions can also help lower your risk of getting HIV:

• Limiting your number of sex partners.
• Getting tested and treated for other sexually transmitted diseases.
• Choosing activities with little to no risk, like oral sex.

You can learn more about how to protect yourself and your partners and get information tailored to meet your needs from CDC’s HIV Risk Reduction Tool (BETA).

If you have HIV, get in care and stay on treatment. Start treatment as soon as possible after you get a diagnosis. The most important thing you can do is take HIV medicine as prescribed by your doctor.

HIV medicine lowers the amount of virus (viral load) in your body, and taking it every day can make your viral load undetectable. If you get and keep an undetectable viral load, you can stay healthy for many years, and you have effectively no risk of sexually transmitting HIV to an HIV-negative partner. To make sure you keep an undetectable viral load, take your medicine as prescribed, and see your provider regularly to monitor your health.

What Can CDC Partners Do?

Health departments, community-based organizations (CBOs), providers, and other partners can

• screen all Hispanics/Latinos for HIV risk and test those at high risk at least once a year;
• expand the reach of HIV prevention programs or discuss HIV prevention options with patients;
• prescribe or link patients to PrEP if they are at very high risk for HIV;
• prescribe or link patients to PEP if they may have been exposed to HIV in the last 72 hours,;
• prescribe HIV prevention to help reduce HIV incidence in the United States;
• link patients to care or prescribe HIV treatment quickly after they get an HIV diagnosis and help them stay in care;
• learn how CDC helps health departments and CBOs plan, implement, and evaluate HIV prevention programs; and
• address stigma and discrimination.

* The term Latinx serves as a gender-neutral alternative to Latino/Latina.