Themed “A Love Letter to Black Women,” this year’s U.S. Conference on HIV/AIDS (USCHA), held in Washington, DC, from September 6 through 9, celebrated the contributions of Black women to the fight against HIV.

Organized by NMAC, whose executive director, Paul Kawata, was recently appointed to the President’s Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS, USCHA addressed best practices in telehealth, HIV stigma, trauma-informed care, biomedical HIV prevention and more via plenary sessions; deep-dive, single-issue “institutes”; and workshops.

Representative Maxine Waters (D–Calif.) headlined the opening plenary, during which the congresswoman praised  Black women’s successes in the HIV epidemic while also underscoring the urgent need to combat House Republicans’ proposed cuts to HIV funding.

In her Gilead Sciences’ plenary remarks, original Dreamgirls and Abbott Elementary star Sheryl Lee Ralph noted the disproportionate impact of HIV on Black women and encouraged attendees to ask themselves, “How do we march forward holding the torch lit during this celebration of Black womanhood? How do we carry that light into the spaces that we occupy in our everyday lives?” As usual, USCHA  gave us an opportunity to pause and appreciate our victories along the way to ending the epidemic, while reminding us of the distance remaining to the finish line.

A special tribute by Gilead Sciences honored the contributions of 10 longtime veterans of the struggle for health equity, sexual and reproductive justice and HIV prevention.Neena Smith-Bankhead/Facebook

Send your event photos to POZ at website@poz.com or tag us on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter. For a list of community events, visit poz.com/calendar.