Transgender women are among the highest at-risk for HIV. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that one in four trans women in the United States are living with HIV; for black trans women, that number is one in two. Yet they often don’t have a voice on this topic. Greater Than AIDS is looking to change that with a new video series titled “Empowered: Trans Women & HIV.”
The videos focus on a diverse group of five transgender women, both HIV positive and negative, who share their own narrative about the virus, talking everything from diagnosis to disclosure to discrimination. Some of the videos highlight individual women’s stories, while others include group conversations.
“Trans people definitely need to have their own voice within HIV. We’re trans. We’re not black, gay men,” Phoebe, one of the featured women, says in the video. Watch her story here.
“We’ve come a long way. We don’t have to live in the shadows anymore, but we still have more work to do. We are not yet where we need to be when it comes to HIV and its impact on trans women,” said JoAnne Keatley, MSW, director of the UCSF Center of Excellence for Transgender Health, in a Greater Than AIDS press release (she also appears in and advised on the campaign). “With this video series, we take a huge step forward as a community in bringing these issues into the light.”
The Kaiser Family Foundation and the UCSF Center of Excellence for Transgender Health teamed up to produce the series, and ViiV Healthcare’s Positive Action for MSM and Transgender Programme provided additional funding. The campaign is being featured at the 21st International AIDS Conference (AIDS 2016) this week in Durban, South Africa, which included an inaugural trans pre-conference.
Read more about the campaign, and access additional tools and support here.
Below is the promo for the video series plus highlights from the group conversation, but you can watch all 12 videos here.
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