Greetings,

December 1 is always a reflective day at IWES as we honor and remember lives lost, take stock of the journey to Zero—new infections, discrimination and AIDS-related deaths—and strive to continue to end the epidemic through testing, counseling, referrals and linkages to care. That’s because December 1 is World AIDS Day, and the fight to prevent the transmission of HIV/AIDS has been a cornerstone of IWES programming almost from the beginning, and we take this day very seriously. This year we are commemorating over 20 years of work within the HIV/AIDS field, and as has tended to happen during the pandemic, this year we’re feeling very reflective. We looked back at our years within this work and realized that, outside of providing testing, doing prevention work and supporting people living with HIV, our clear through line has been to tell the stories of those marginalized within the epidemic, specifically Black women and youth. We’ve been sharing their stories through media-based outlets such as films and podcasts (hear from activist Gina Brown here and here) as well as platforms for in-person interactions such as events and speaking engagements. So this year, we want to keep doing just that. Media has an immense power to share new information and perspectives, and to move hearts and minds, and we found, especially for the work we’ve done to reduce stigma, media is our best way to get folks’ attention and engage them in sensitive topics and hard conversations. Thus, today we’re sharing brief clips from some of our media pieces and we invite you to engage with them and watch the full films, share them, start a conversation, and continue to show up either for yourself or in solidarity. But before we get into the films, we want to share our journey within this work and tell the history of our programs, initiatives and projects that center the experiences, well-being and health of people living with HIV.

IWES was founded in 1993, and around 1995, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) data began to show a shift in the demographics of the incidence of HIV disease. After this point it became very clear that now that the epidemic was beginning to be seen more and more in the African American population, IWES needed to engage the African American community into a deeper understanding of the disease—the biology, epidemiology of the virus, risk factors, prevention and treatment. After conducting STI and HIV prevention programming with teens for a few years, in 2001 IWES partnered with the National Medical Association and took a group of young people to Ghana to engage in cross-cultural dialogue about sexual health and HIV prevention. This trip was life-altering for the young people as they gained deeper insights into their African heritage and recognized the ancestral connectivity to the young Ghanaians they met. For example, on a bus ride out to the countryside, we all watched with awe as a second line procession passed our windows, affirming the deep African cultural retention so deeply embedded in New Orleans’ traditions. Our takeaway from this trip was that the emerging HIV epidemic in Black people was going to require honest and culturally resonant engagement with youth to help them personalize their risk and have the tools for prevention. Therefore, it was no surprise that in 2004 IWES received its first grant (and adapted it!) from the CDC to develop a community-level prevention program for young people. IWES adapted the evidence-based curriculum Community PROMISE to include a significant focus on media and edutainment, hence birthing our beloved Media Advocates for Prevention (MAP) program. Over the years MAP had many iterations and worked directly with around 75 youth Peer Advocates (PAs), yet it impacted thousands through its many HIV-focused short films (by youth, starring youth, for youth); condom and resource dissemination via convenient and stylish MAP or STOP kits; appearances at health events, school assemblies and local and national conferences; and so much more. Our current comprehensive sexuality education programming with young people does not focus solely on HIV prevention, rather it centers around the need for young people to gain access to all of the information and services they need to engage in healthy relationships and safe sexual behaviors. Yet we remain committed to mobilizing, educating and advocating around HIV. We firmly believe that youth have the power to stop the virus from gaining access to their bodies when they receive medically accurate and non-shaming information about human sexuality, embedded with a deep understanding of how their mental landscape influences their sexual decision-making.

Outside of our youth work, we’ve also had a long trajectory of work with adults, especially through the many years of sustained funding from the CDC to conduct counseling, testing and referrals; reduce stigma,;support people living with HIV; and, link newly diagnosed folks into care. We’ve been through it all—all of the language changes, all of the national strategies, all of the campaigns (we love you Greater Than!). We started off solely doing referrals and prevention work with youth, then transitioned to conducting community-based testing out in the field—advised by a very active Community Advisory Board—and even expanded to include testing for other STIs, too, such as Syphilis. We’ve worked with partners to better address the mental health needs of folks living with HIV, especially those working to reduce intimate partner violence by reinforcing the connection between these two issues, creating and disseminating integrated screeners to flag for these concerns and providing trainings on trauma to clinical staff. Started by a Black woman living with HIV, we’ve created a support group for Black women living with HIV to find community amongst one another, reinforce their leadership and advocacy skills and progress further on their journeys to healing. And at this moment, we’re also excited to work with a local clinic to enhance the services and experiences they provide to Black cis- and transgender women living with HIV through an initiative that includes trainings, two new evidence-based interventions and a stigma reduction campaign that will be helmed by and feature Black cis- and transgender women living with HIV. As mentioned above, we truly believe in the power of media and throughout this time we’ve made many films about this work, almost always starring Black women or youth impacted by HIV. We’ve had our films screened at many events and festivals, and most recently we were extremely proud to be recognized by the New Orleans Film Society as an authority in this space and asked to create a short film focusing on the experiences of Black women living with HIV. The resulting film, New Nickels, was supported by Gilead and premiered this November at the New Orleans Film Festival as a lyrical homage to the healing journeys of women finding their ways out of the shadows. We invite you to watch the film here.

So those are our receipts. We share them not to brag or seek validation, rather we share them to show our dedication and commitment to this work and let folks know that just as this is a chronic disease, this is chronic work, and to really end the epidemic it’s crucial to stay in this work and adapt, grow and expand with the changes in the epidemic. We also recognize that as an organization not led by folks living with HIV, our place within this work is as an ally, and as much as possible, we want to let those most directly impacted by HIV—people living with HIV, families and dear friends of folks living with HIV, families and dear friends of folks who have died due to AIDS-related causes—steer the ship.

Without further ado, we want to just thank everyone impacted by HIV—which according to Gina Brown is everybody—for trusting us to do this work, and we invite you to watch, share, comment, and interact with the films we’re sharing today to keep elevating these powerful voices.