August 20, 2021 — Today, Positive Women’s Network – USA (PWN) commemorates the annual Southern HIV/AIDS Awareness Day (SHAAD). Launched by the Southern AIDS Coalition in 2019, SHAAD is a day set aside for individuals all over the nation to join a movement to raise awareness, erase HIV-related stigma and discrimination, and advocate for new and necessary resources and solutions to improve the lives of people living with HIV in the South.
This important awareness day is also recognized by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which reports that more than 511,400 people are living with HIV in the South. People living with HIV in the South face stigma and discrimination that often results in lack of access to high-quality health care and essential support services. This reality requires everyone as a nation to collectively develop solutions to reduce these disparities and combat the HIV epidemic in the South.
PWN is committed to building and supporting leadership among women and people of trans experience living with HIV in the South. Much of PWN’s membership base lives in the South, including regional chapters in Alabama, Louisiana, South Carolina, and Texas which organize and mobilize their communities to protect and expand services and funding for programs that benefit people living with and vulnerable to HIV, as well as fighting attacks on reproductive rights, voting rights, and the human rights of people of trans experience and LGBTQIA people. For example, just this year, the PWN Texas Strike Force—a statewide coalition led by members of the PWN Texas chapter—successfully fought back against eligibility changes to the state’s AIDS Drugs Assistance Program or ADAP that would have resulted in thousands of people living with HIV losing access to lifesaving medications.
PWN also launched Project SWARM (Southern Women Advocacy Response Mobilization) as an ongoing organizing space for people living with HIV and allies this year. On the monthly calls, held the fourth Monday of each month at 6:30pm EDT/5:30pm CDT, advocates identify and discuss problems and barriers to care, brainstorm solutions, learn from experts, and strategize on how to fight against harmful policies and for supportive ones. This month’s SWARM call Monday, August 23, is dedicated to SHAAD and features an all-star panel of members of the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV and AIDS (PACHA) Tori Cooper, Alicia Diggs, Raniyah Copeland, and Marlene McNeese. All people living with HIV, allies, and HIV advocates are invited to join the SWARM call. To get the info to join, please register at pwn-usa.org/join-swarm.
“PWN is committed to putting the resources and effort needed to organize our members, base, and communities in the South,” said PWN Co-Executive Director Venita Ray, a resident of Houston, Texas. “There is a bittersweet legacy here of resilience and resistance to deeply entrenched racism, which has created and exacerbated health disparities on top of economic ones. Despite the South’s shameful history of slavery, segregation, and continued oppression and disenfranchisement of Black people, we are stronger and more determined than ever to win liberation for our people. PWN is proud to be a key player in the struggle for freedom and equity in the South—yesterday, today, and as long as it takes.”
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