Young people from our Youth Advisory Board, Riley and Jasmine, presented at the 2019 United States Conference on AIDS. The conference held in Washington, DC, focused on the plan to end the HIV epidemic in America. Health departments, community-based organizations, People Living with HIV, People on PrEP, national organizations, health centers, health care providers, donors, activists, and federal leaders came together to discuss implementation.
Riley and Jasmine’s presentation focused on the experiences of young queer black males and their experiences often being omitted from discussions about mainstream queer rights. They presented youth-led qualitative research that aims to address these omissions by studying the lives of individuals ages 21 – 25 in the queer black male community, and their experiences in the San Francisco Bay Area. This demographic is at disproportionate risk of HIV, yet their experiences are seldom represented in research. To reach the end of the epidemic, Riley and Jasmine believe we must center marginalized communities with persistently poorer prevention and treatment outcomes, including young queer black men.
