2018 HIV Prevention Starts with Me
Tremendous progress has been made against HIV and AIDS in the U.S., but women remain vulnerable to infection, especially African-American and Hispanic women.
Any woman who has sex can get HIV, regardless of race, ethnicity, age, or sexual orientation.
Currently, there are 1.1 million people in the U.S. living with HIV, and nearly 1/4 of them are women (23%).
The 2018 National Women and Girls HIV AIDS Awareness Day (NWGHAAD) theme “HIV Prevention Starts with Me”, emphasizes the role everyone — women, men, community organizations, health care professionals, those who are HIV-negative, and those who are HIV-positive — play in HIV prevention
There are steps you can take to protect yourself, your partner, family, and neighbors from HIV infection, and it STARTS WITH EACH OF US!
Now Is The Time: 2018
Know your HIV status by getting tested! It’s the first step in taking control of your life and reducing the HIV transmission in your Community.
Do it today. Find a test site near you in Nebraska by visiting our Service Directory for more information and test site search.
Then heed the advice and get into care…
The five stages of the HIV Care Continuum
- KNOW YOUR STATUS
- CONNECT TO CARE
- START HIV TREATMENT
- STAY IN CARE
- KEEP THE VIRUS UNDER CONTROL
Quick and Dirty: Women and HIV
- New HIV diagnoses among women and teen girls by race/ethnicity: Blacks/African Americans accounted for 61% of new HIV diagnoses among women, whites accounted for 19%, Hispanics/Latinas accounted for 16%, and other races/ethnicities accounted for 5%.
- Care data for women living with HIV: Among women living with HIV, 88% received an HIV diagnosis, 64% received care, 50% were retained in care, and 48% were virally suppressed.
- Care data for women living with HIV: Only about half of the women living with HIV have achieved viral suppression.
Women & HIV Stats from amfAR
These statistics are from amfAR (The Foundation for AIDS Research) and give a snapshot of HIV in the US as well as Globally. The stats show some positive steps forward in the fight against HIV transmission, and what an uphill battle it remains in 2018.
In the United States
- Women accounted for 19% of new HIV diagnoses in 2015. Of these, 86% were attributed to heterosexual sex and 13% to injection drug use. But among white women, 32% of new HIV diagnoses were attributed to injection drug use.
- The proportion of AIDS diagnoses reported among women has more than tripled since the early days of the epidemic, from 7% in 1985 to 24% in 2015.
- Approximately one in four people living with HIV are women.
- Of the total estimated number of women living with diagnosed HIV at the end of 2014, 60% were African American, 17% were white, and 17% were Hispanic/Latina.
- African Americans and Hispanics represent 31% of people in the U.S. but they account for approximately 77% of women living with HIV.
Around the Globe
- In 2016, there were an estimated 17.8 million women living with HIV (aged 15 and older), constituting 51% of all adults living with HIV.
- HIV/AIDS is the leading cause of death among women of reproductive age (aged 15–44).
- In 2016, of the total estimated 1.8 million new HIV infections globally, almost 43% were among women.
- In 2016, new infections among young women (aged 15–24 years) were 44% higher than they were among men in the same age group.
- In 2016, 11,655 teenagers and young women between the ages of 15 and 24 were infected with HIV every week, the majority in sub-Saharan Africa.
- In some regions, women who are exposed to intimate partner violence are 50% more likely to acquire HIV than women who are not exposed.
- In 2016, around 76% of pregnant women living with HIV received antiretroviral medicines to prevent the transmission of HIV to their children.
What can you do on March 10?
- Talk about HIV and AIDS in your community.
- Show your support for women and girls affected by HIV and AIDS on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or Tumblr; and use the hashtags #NWGHAAD and #ICanStopHIV.
- Read the Facebook posts and tweets on HIV Prevention Starts With ME campaign from women living with HIV at womenshealth.gov.
Take 2 Women & HIV
In 2016, more than 7,000 women received an HIV diagnosis. Black women are still disproportionately affected by HIV, compared with women of other races/ethnicities.
Nearly two-thirds of women who received an HIV diagnosis in 2016 were black.
Most women who get HIV get it from heterosexual sex. HIV diagnoses attributed to injection drug use (IDU) declined 20% among women overall from 2011 to
2015. But white women experienced a 21% increase in HIV diagnoses attributed to IDU during that time. More than a quarter of HIV diagnoses among white
women in 2016 were attributed to IDU.
Today, there are more options than ever to prevent HIV. Join us in taking action to help all women have the knowledge and tools they need to protect themselves and their partners.
Update: HIV Diagnoses in the United States for the Most-Affected Subpopulations, 2016
Just to give you some perspective, here are some stats that should make you take notice of what the state of HIV is in the United States!
- Black male-to-male sexual contact = 10,223
- Hispanic/Latino male-to-male sexual contact = 7,425
- White male-to-male sexual contact = 7,390
- Black women, heterosexual contact = 4,189
- Black men, heterosexual contact = 1,926
- White women, heterosexual contact = 1,032
- Hispanic/Latina women, heterosexual contact = 1,025
Source: CDC.
US Dept of Health and Human Services Office on Womens Health History
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office on Women’s Health (OWH) was established in 1991 to improve the health of U.S. women by advancing and coordinating a comprehensive women’s health agenda.
During the early 1990s, OWH focused on developing women’s health as a specialized issue for government action and attention alongside efforts by partner organizations. These issues included research, health care prevention and service delivery, public and health care professional education, and career advancement for women in health and scientific careers.
Thanks to OWH’s leadership, women’s health is now firmly rooted in the national health landscape and many great achievements have been made in women’s health. Today, OWH focuses on emerging women’s health priorities to meet the needs of women and girls.
Working collaboratively with federal agencies and partners, OWH supports a variety of campaigns, programs, and policies around health disparities, violence against women, HIV and AIDS, trauma-informed care, health across the lifespan, and the provision of health care for women and girls in the United States.
Lily&Q’s say…It was late Fall of 1990 when I got my HIV diagnosis but reading the sobering statistics from 2016 makes me wonder what the 2017, 2018 and so on will look like. Will anything change for the better for Women and Girls having to live with HIV?
Will transmission rates change in the most effected sub populations? Will some of those sub-populations continue on their current trend?
Will time tell or is the damage already done?
Stats only give us a glimpse of the epidemic at any one given moment in time, and that’s the problem.
We know too late by the numbers what population we should and should have been concentrating our “Stop HIV Transmission…” messages toward, so how can we really make a difference for 2018?
We can start with this year’s campaign targeted to all of us!
HIV PREVENTION STARTS WITH ME says it all.
One person gets tested for HIV and knows their status, gets into care or treated for other STIs they might have, and an entire community benefits.
BE THE ONE Today! Know your HIV status, and make the difference for your daughter, sister, friend or…
The hardest thing I have ever, ever done is have to tell my lover I was HIV positive.
A sickening silence hung in the air after I said the words, “I have it…HIV.”
Trust me it sucks to say, and I can only assume hear from someone.
HIV Prevention Starts With YOU…So get off your butt and get tested TODAY!