Personal Stories

Fighting Mississippi’s HIV epidemic is about more than just getting people living with HIV or at risk for HIV on a pill. It means confronting the reality that for many in the state, their primary care doctor is the emergency room.

While black and Latinx gay and bisexual men and transgender women make up a larger portion of HIV cases in and around Boston, the opioid crisis has led to spiking HIV rates among injection drug users.

The HIV epidemic in Philadelphia is heavily concentrated in its black population. Local caregivers at BEBASHI have seen diagnosis rates drop in recent years, though there’s still progress to be made.

Living with HIV for the past 16 years and being over the age of 50, Charles Sanchez is showing signs of aging, but no sign of slowing down.

'Still at Risk' is about long-term survivors, but it's for younger gay men too.

"HIV for African-American women has never been a single issue, separate from histories of addiction, trauma and poverty," Thurka Sangaramoorthy writes.

A conversation with Jeff Taylor, longtime HIV community and research advocate and cancer survivor.

On the 30th anniversary of her HIV diagnosis, Dawn Averitt writes, "Just being alive in 2018, the mother of three daughters, did not only seem unlikely in 1988, it seemed implausible at best and more realistically, impossible at the time."

Justin B. Terry-Smith talks with five people who have been HIV positive between 10 and 30-plus years to better understand what being a long-term survivor means and to learn about some of the challenges they face.

"My years of smoking are much more likely to kill me than HIV," Mark S. King writes. "I suppose that's progress, and testament to how far we have come in my 32 years living with the virus. So why am I so defensive about my switch to vaping?"