February 7 is National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' (HHS) Office of Infectious Disease and HIV/AIDS Policy (OIDP), part of the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health (OASH), will host Live with Leadership: A Conversation Commemorating National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day with federal and community leaders.
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The White House recently released the National HIV/AIDS Strategy which highlights Black gay, bisexual and other men who have sex with men, and Black women, including transgender women, as populations that are disproportionately impacted by HIV.
It comes as on Dec. 1, 2021, President Biden commemorated World AIDS Day and renewed the U.S. government’s bipartisan and decades-long commitment to ending the HIV epidemic at home and around the world. In the face of the COVID-19 pandemic that has impacted every aspect of the HIV/AIDS response, from prevention to treatment to research, the United States government committed to redoubling efforts to confront the HIV/AIDS epidemic and achieve equitable access to HIV prevention, care, and treatment in every community—particularly for communities of color, adolescent girls and young women, and the LGBTQI+ community.
2021 marked 40 years since the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention officially reported the first cases of what later became known as AIDS.
An estimated 36 million people—including 700,000 in the United States—have died from AIDS-related illness. Nearly 38 million people are living with HIV, including 1.2 million in the United States.
The Biden-Harris Administration has worked to build on the progress of past years and promote American global health leadership while advancing strategies and policies to improve access to health services, address stigma and discrimination, achieve equity, support human rights, strengthen public health infrastructure.
Releasing the National HIV/AIDS Strategy, President Biden pledged to update and implement the nation’s comprehensive HIV/AIDS strategy to “aggressively reduce new HIV cases, while increasing access to treatment and eliminating inequitable access to medical and support services.”
Mr Biden released a new National HIV/AIDS Strategy to provide the framework and direction for the Administration’s policies, research, programs, and planning through 2025 and lead us toward ending the HIV epidemic in the United States by 2030. The new National HIV/AIDS Strategy:
- Incorporates the latest data on HIV incidence, prevalence and trends;
- Expands the focus on addressing the social determinants of health that influence an individual’s HIV risk or outcomes;
- Encourages reform of state HIV criminalization laws;
- Adds a new focus on opportunities to engage the private sector in novel and important ways in the nation’s work to end the HIV epidemic.
Ultimately, the goal is to accelerate progress to end the HIV/AIDS epidemic by 2030.