Our final conversation for the Living With HIV series features Nicole Roebuck-Warner the executive director of AID Atlanta. The organization provided a safe place for women to share their stories and even advocate for other women who haven’t yet found their voices.
HIV was officially recognized in 1981. The disease, initally centered around white gay men came with the stigma of being mostly transmitted via sexual activity. In the white gay community the spread of HIV has been tamped down. The medical research has produced drugs that significantly reduce the transmission of the virus. PrEP the drug developed and in use by both
men and women isn’t readily available unless you have access to insurance. Roebuck speaks about the ongoing challenges and urges us to think about the why?
Roebuck-Warner continuously mentions the social determinants of health which exacerbates outcomes including access, affordability and more. We speak about women and the need for us to learn and share what a healthy sexual relationship looks like.
The stigma that still exist around HIV is one of the reasons that it is still spreading especially in our community. Roebuck-Warner hopes that AID Atlanta will be out of business in the next decade. Hopefully we can do the work to tamp down transmission to eliminate one chronic disease from our list.
For more informtion, testing and services reach out to AID Atlanta or Empowerment Resource Center.