Breaking Through: Promoting HIV Harm Reduction to Skeptical Audiences

Featuring

[Moderator] Chelsea Boyd, Resident Research Fellow, Integrated Harm Reduction, R Street Institute

Toni Newman, Director, Coalition for Justice and Equality Across Movements, and Acting Director, Training Center to End the Epidemic, NMAC

Sen. Megan Hunt, Nebraska Unicameral Legislature

Katherine Wells, Director of Public Health, City of Lubbock, Texas

Overview

How can we persuade the public and reluctant policymakers to continue the work to end the domestic HIV epidemic? The federal goal of 90 percent reduction of new HIV infections in the United States by 2030 cannot be achieved without increased focus on communities that are most at risk. But this unevenly distributed risk can lead to an “it won’t happen to me” mindset and to deprioritization of the issue among the general population and policymakers. 

Great strides have been made in HIV prevention and treatment, but approximately 1.2 million people in the United States have HIV, and more than 36,000 individuals received an HIV diagnosis in 2021. While no longer necessarily a terminal illness, HIV impacts quality of life and life expectancy, and lifetime treatment cost per person is estimated at more than $420,000.

Join us for a conversation with people on the frontlines of the work to end the HIV epidemic. We’ll hear how they persuade skeptical audiences that HIV still matters and why prioritizing populations most vulnerable to HIV infection results in good outcomes for all of us.