KANSAS CITY, Mo. — National Women and Girls HIV/AIDS Awareness Day is recognized March 10.
Kansas City nonprofit BlaqOut, which works to improve healthcare access while creating a safe space for KC's LGBTQ+ community, believes it's important to bring visibility to this day.
“We really need to know what’s going on with our bodies so we can do something about it, and for people living with HIV, it doesn’t take away from your value at all,” said Devin Hursey, advocacy and public policy manager for BlaqOut.
Hursey cited the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's 2023 "HIV Surveillance Report," which concluded 18% of HIV diagnoses in 2021 were in women and 2% were in transgender women.
In the CDC's 2021 report, the data showed of the 19% of women diagnosed in 2019, 54% of the women affected were Black.
“I think the LGBT community, many members of the community at least have a concept of these risks because it's become such a part of the culture,” Hursey said. "But I think for many cisgender women, they don’t really consider HIV as a possibility for them.”
Ultimately, Hursey believes the stigma of HIV "keeps people from even wanting to get tested because they are afraid of not only what HIV might do to their body but what other people might think."
As a result, many are anxious to visit a doctor, which Hursey said is especially vital for women and girls since it's not often discussed that HIV can be transmitted through heterosexual contact.
“I don’t know how many times I hear people say negative things about people with HIV that they don’t think they are clean or they ought to be avoided for one reason or another,” Hursey said. "Definitely get tested. Taking care of your body should not be something you are afraid to do, and it's unfortunate the world has made it that way.”
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