National Youth HIV/AIDS Awareness Day Reminds Young People They Are Not Forgotten
During these uncertain times, RAIN President and CEO Chelsea Gulden talks about the importance of taking a grassroots approach to HIV advocacy to work with young people in the local communities who are either dealing with the virus or are susceptible to it.
Annually, April 10 is National Youth HIV and AIDS Awareness Day (NYHAAD), which commemorates young people who are vulnerable to or living with the virus. The day reminds young people of the importance of sexual health and lets them know that public health officials and other key stakeholders are thinking of them—and that they have a voice in addressing HIV.
“This day highlights testing efforts, prevention efforts, and just a very specific intention to work with this community in in a more cultural way,” RAIN President and CEO Chelsea Gulden, said.
The youth population is especially susceptible to new infections. Young people between the ages of 13 and 24 accounted for 20% of new HIV acquisitions in 2022. Among people living with HIV, those aged 13–24 are the least likely of any age group to be aware of their HIV status.1
Gulden’s organization has been a long-standing beacon for the HIV community, having served the Charlotte, NC area since 1992. RAIN provides a number of services, including HIV/STI testing, outreach in communities with the highest rates of HIV to counsel people about HIV care and prevention, and support services that include medical case management, peer navigation, PrEP/PEP case management, mental health counseling, substance use services, health insurance enrollment, and emergency assistance for housing, utilities, and food.
Even in these times of uncertainty—with federal HIV funding pauses and program eliminations—Gulden says they lean on the local community and a grassroots approach to rally everyone.
“We could see decades of work lost,” Gulden said of these federal public health policy changes and their impact on HIV efforts. “One thing that we do here at RAIN is really ground ourselves in the community. We talk to people and draw strength and resilience from the communities that we serve. HIV was birthed from a grassroots effort, so when we first started, we didn't have a lot of federal funding; we didn't have a lot of support,” Gulden said. “We really rallied from communities that were impacted, like the youth community. So we plan to try to get back more to our roots and also lean on those communities that lifted us up back in the ’90s.”
RAIN receives grant funding through ViiV Healthcare, which Gulden says they are grateful for.
“We're really proud to be partnering with ViiV Healthcare. It allows us to look at the needs from a more holistic approach, whereas federal funding is sometimes pretty narrowly focused,” Gulden said. “If federal funding went away, we would still have the support to assist with some of the youth work that we're doing.”
Gulden also points out the importance of not viewing young people as one homogenous group.
“I think a lot of people look at youth as one population, but just like any other population, there are intricacies within the youth community,” Gulden said. “This is one of the reasons why ViiV has been so essential to us creating, implementing, and maintaining a really robust and comprehensive program as it relates to our youth services.”
There are resources and information about NYHAAD on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) website.
