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Menopause and HIV: What’s the Connection?
Read More: Menopause and HIV: What’s the Connection?+ Infographic text Women of all ages can get HIV — including those over 50 1 in 4 people living with HIV in the United States is a woman. More than 1 in 2 new HIV diagnoses are in people above age 50. Older women are more likely than younger women to be diagnosed at…
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Comic Strip: Heather Gets an HIV Test
Read More: Comic Strip: Heather Gets an HIV Test+ Comic strip text Image Dialogue [GRAPHIC] Heather — a woman in her mid to late 50s — is holding her phone and her dating app shows she has a new match. She has a big smile on her face as a text bubble appears showing their conversation Guy: “Friday night dinner?” Heather: “It’s a…
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Aprende más, Espanol, HIV, Hivaids, Sexually transmitted diseases, Sexually transmitted infections, Stds, Sti
Las mujeres y el VIH
Read More: Las mujeres y el VIH+ Infographic text Mujeres recibieron 1 de cada 5 diagnósticos nuevos de VIH en 2022 Más de 4 de cada 5 de estas mujeres recibieron el virus por relaciones sexuales con personas de distinto sexo La mayoría de diagnósticos fueron para mujeres entre los 25 y los 34 años, seguidas de cerca por las mujeres…
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Who Should Get Tested for HIV?
Read More: Who Should Get Tested for HIV?+ Infographic text In the U.S. 1 in 4 people living with HIV is a woman 1 in 5 new HIV diagnoses is a woman Women of color — especially Black women — are at higher risk for HIV Almost 3 in 5 new HIV diagnoses in the U.S. are Black women Testing helps stop…
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Women and HIV
Read More: Women and HIV+ Infographic text Women made up almost 1 out of 5 new HIV diagnoses in 2022 More than 4 out of 5 of these women got the virus from heterosexual sex Most diagnoses were in women ages 25–34, but women ages 35–44 were close behind Between 2010 and 2022, the number of new HIV diagnoses…
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Clinically Speaking: Questions and Answers About HIV and Bone Health
Read More: Clinically Speaking: Questions and Answers About HIV and Bone HealthOsteoporosis is known as the silent disease for good reason. People rarely show symptoms of the bone condition before a break or fracture happens. The word “osteoporosis” literally means porous bone because it causes the natural holes in your bones to get bigger, which makes your bones thinner and weaker and more likely to break.…
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I Was Shocked When I Tested HIV+ in My 50s. Twenty Years Later, I’m Happier Than Ever.
Read More: I Was Shocked When I Tested HIV+ in My 50s. Twenty Years Later, I’m Happier Than Ever.As told to Nicole Audrey Spector Back when I worked for the Coast Guard, we used to have regular health checkups. Sexually transmitted infection (STI) testing, including HIV, was done routinely. My results always came back negative. No surprise there. I believed I had no reason to worry because I didn’t have any risk factors…
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HIV and the Risk of Other Health Problems
Read More: HIV and the Risk of Other Health ProblemsEspañol December 1, 2025, is World AIDS Day. Thanks to a treatment called antiretroviral therapy (ART), people assigned female at birth (AFAB) and women with HIV are now living (and thriving!) into old age. More than half of all people with HIV in the United States are 50 and over. But HIV is linked to…
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Aprende más, Espanol, HIV, Hivaids, Sexually transmitted diseases, Sexually transmitted infections, Stds, Sti
El VIH y el riesgo de otros problemas médicos
Read More: El VIH y el riesgo de otros problemas médicosEnglish El 1 de diciembre de 2025 es el Día Mundial del SIDA. Gracias al tratamiento denominado terapia antirretroviral (TAR), personas con asignación femenina cuando nacieron (AFAB, por sus siglas en inglés) y mujeres con VIH ahora viven (¡y tienen éxito!) hasta la vejez. Más de la mitad de personas con VIH en Estados Unidos…
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How Does Your HIV Status Affect Your Gynecological Health?
Read More: How Does Your HIV Status Affect Your Gynecological Health?HIV isn’t in the news so much anymore, but that doesn’t mean it’s gone away. The latest statistics show that around 1.2 million people in the United States have HIV — and around 13% of those people don’t know they have it. That’s about 156,000 people who aren’t aware they have the virus. There are…
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HIV, Hivaids, Preventive health, Sexually transmitted diseases, Sexually transmitted infections, Stds, Sti
Barriers to Accessing PrEP Mean Missed Opportunities to Prevent HIV
Read More: Barriers to Accessing PrEP Mean Missed Opportunities to Prevent HIVWhen HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, was first identified in the 1980s, it almost certainly a death sentence. More than 100,000 Americans died from the new disease in that decade. The idea that one day there might be medicines to prevent infection was a fantasy. Today, these medicines, called pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), do exist,…
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FAQs About HIV and Pregnancy
Read More: FAQs About HIV and PregnancyMedically reviewed by Emily Barr, PhD, RN, CPNP-PC, CNM, ACRN, FACNM, FAAN It might feel overwhelming if you’re living with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and want to get pregnant. You might wonder if you could pass on the virus to your baby, or if you can keep taking your HIV medications while pregnant. These concerns…
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Protecting Yourself or Your Partner from HIV
Read More: Protecting Yourself or Your Partner from HIVMedically reviewed by Kamila Alexander, Ph.D., MSN/MPH, BSN, BS, RN + Flipbook text Slide 1 Protecting Yourself or Your Partner from HIV How to talk to intimate partners about HIV Slide 2 Major changes in midlife Despite what people may think, many women over age 50 are interested in having sex. And midlife may mean…
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The Great Girlfriends Podcast: Understanding HIV – Let’s Get to Know the Facts
Read More: The Great Girlfriends Podcast: Understanding HIV – Let’s Get to Know the FactsWe partnered with The Great Girlfriends Show to answer some important questions about HIV. Our expert guest, Ada Stewart, M.D., FAAFP, answers some common questions: How HIV diagnosis and treatment has changed over the past few decades The myths about HIV — and the truths we all need to know Protection and the information we…
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HIV, Hivaids, Lgbtq, Sexually transmitted diseases, Sexually transmitted infections, Stds, Sti, Transgender
Why Transgender Women Are at Higher Risk for HIV
Read More: Why Transgender Women Are at Higher Risk for HIVWhen it comes to HIV, there’s positive news: Infection rates have been declining since 2017, and there’s hope for the development of an HIV vaccine. But there’s still much progress to be made in the transgender community, which is heavily affected by the disease. A study done by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention…
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No HIV for Me: Protect Yourself from HIV with PrEP and PEP
Read More: No HIV for Me: Protect Yourself from HIV with PrEP and PEPMedically reviewed by Jeffrey Kwong, DNP, MPH, AGPCNP-BC, FAANP, FAAN + Video transcript Narrator: Think you’re not at risk for HIV? Think again! Anyone who’s having sex without a condom is at risk of getting HIV. And, when it comes to protecting yourself, there are really good options out there. The first one is called…
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HIV, Hivaids, Prevention, Preventive health, Real women real stories, Sexually transmitted diseases, Sexually transmitted infections, Stds, Sti
After Being Sexually Assaulted, I Started Taking PrEP — and I Plan to Be on It for Life
Read More: After Being Sexually Assaulted, I Started Taking PrEP — and I Plan to Be on It for LifeAs told to Nicole Audrey Spector In 2020, I met a man and invited him over for tea. We were attracted to one another and I was prepared to have sex with him. Once we started making out, I took out a condom. He refused to put it on, pinned me down on the bed…
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Women Can Get HIV, Too. That’s Why They Need to Get Tested for HIV.
Read More: Women Can Get HIV, Too. That’s Why They Need to Get Tested for HIV.Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) is a type of virus that attacks your body’s immune system, leaving you more at risk for infections. It can be spread by coming into contact with someone else’s infected blood or body fluids. Some people may wonder if women can get HIV. And the answer is yes. One in 4…
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Medications That Treat and Prevent HIV
Read More: Medications That Treat and Prevent HIV+ Infographic text Nearly 7,000 women in the U.S. are diagnosed with HIV each year. There is no cure for HIV. But treatments can make the amount of virus in your blood so low that tests can no longer find it. This is called “undetectable viral load.” Being in treatment means people living with HIV…
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Tus palabras pueden marcar la diferencia en la lucha contra el estigma del VIH
Read More: Tus palabras pueden marcar la diferencia en la lucha contra el estigma del VIH+ Booklet text Slide 1: Lucha en contra del estigma: Cómo hablar sobre el VIH El estigma duele, pero tus palabras pueden sanar. Esta guía corta te enseñará lo que debes decir para ayudar a romper el estigma. Slide 2: ¿Qué es el estigma del VIH? ¿Qué es el estigma del VIH? Comportamientos…
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HIV, Hivaids, Real women real stories, Sexually transmitted diseases, Sexually transmitted infections, Stds, Sti
I Was Diagnosed with HIV When I Was 15. It’s Been a Journey of Learning to Love Myself Enough to Take My Meds.
Read More: I Was Diagnosed with HIV When I Was 15. It’s Been a Journey of Learning to Love Myself Enough to Take My Meds.As told to Nicole Audrey Spector I became sexually active when I was really young — just 13 years old. I probably wasn’t emotionally mature enough for sex, but I had a boyfriend I trusted. We used birth control, but not condoms, so we had no protection against sexually transmitted infections (STIs). Though I didn’t…
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I Was the First Living Kidney Donor with HIV
Read More: I Was the First Living Kidney Donor with HIVAs told to Erica Rimlinger I’m living with HIV, and I’m perfectly healthy. That statement would have sounded impossible to my childhood self. When I was 8 years old in 1991, I needed corrective eye surgery, and routine pre-op blood work revealed that I had HIV. It was not routine back then to test children…
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How HIV Affects Menopause and Menopause Affects HIV
Read More: How HIV Affects Menopause and Menopause Affects HIVWhen Vickie Lynn learned she was HIV positive in 1991 at the age of 21, she thought she’d been given a death sentence. She certainly never imagined she’d live long enough to see a milestone that affects women later in life — menopause. Now 57 years old and solidly postmenopausal, Lynn still remembers how hard…
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En qué forma el VIH afecta la menopausia y viceversa
Read More: En qué forma el VIH afecta la menopausia y viceversaCuando Vickie Lynn recibió resultados positivos del VIH en 1991, cuando tenía 21 años, pensó que le habían dado una sentencia de muerte. Ciertamente nunca imaginó que viviría lo suficiente para ver un evento que afecta a las mujeres en etapas posteriores de sus vidas, la menopausia. Ahora que tiene 57 años y es posmenopáusica,…
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Conversación sobre la salud: Preguntas para tu proveedor de servicios médicos sobre tu tratamiento del VIH
Read More: Conversación sobre la salud: Preguntas para tu proveedor de servicios médicos sobre tu tratamiento del VIHHan habido avances importantes de los tratamientos para el virus de inmunodeficiencia humana (VIH) en la última década. Para mantenerte al tanto de los más recientes tratamientos y avances, es importante tener una buena colaboración de trabajo con tu proveedor de servicios médicos (HCP, por sus siglas en inglés). Hablamos con Jessica Zajesky, R.N., coordinadora…
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Clinically Speaking: Questions to Ask Your Healthcare Provider About Your HIV Treatment
Read More: Clinically Speaking: Questions to Ask Your Healthcare Provider About Your HIV TreatmentTreatment for human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) has taken major leaps forward in the past decade. To stay up to date with the latest treatments and advances, it’s important to have a good working partnership with your healthcare provider (HCP). We talked to Jessica Zajesky, R.N., care coordinator for the HIV medicine division at the Albany…
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PrEP and PEP: Prevention for HIV
Read More: PrEP and PEP: Prevention for HIVMedically reviewed by Jeffrey Kwong, DNP, MPH, AGPCNP-BC, FAANP, FAAN Around 7,000 women in the United States are diagnosed with HIV each year. But the good news is that there are two strategies, called PrEP and PEP, that can help you stay HIV negative. Both options require you to take antiretroviral drugs, which can prevent…
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HIV, Aging and Whole Person Care
Read More: HIV, Aging and Whole Person Care+ Infographic text Physical health HIV has different symptoms based on the stage of infection. The 3 stages of HIV infection are: Acute Chronic Acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) Adults who live with chronic inflammation from HIV for a long time are at higher risk for Heart disease Diabetes Renal disease Osteoporosis If you don’t take…
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HIV, Hivaids, Real women real stories, Sexually transmitted diseases, Sexually transmitted infections, Stds, Sti
I Don’t Regret Getting HIV Because It Saved My Life
Read More: I Don’t Regret Getting HIV Because It Saved My LifeAs told to Aviva Patz September 18, 2022, is National HIV/AIDS and Aging Awareness Day. It’s hard to believe that HIV could be a blessing, but for me, it was. That’s because it gave me a chance to change my life. After having been sexually abused by my uncle and emotionally abused by my father,…
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healthy aging, HIV, Hivaids, Real women real stories, Sexually transmitted diseases, Sexually transmitted infections, Stds, Sti
I Believe I’m Aging Faster Because I Have HIV
Read More: I Believe I’m Aging Faster Because I Have HIVAs told to Erica Rimlinger In 1985, I read magazine articles about a new, medical mass murderer: Human Immunodeficiency Virus, or HIV. It sounded awful but had nothing to do with my life. From everything I’d read and seen on TV, this newly discovered condition afflicted gay men and drug users. That wasn’t me. I…
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Chlamydia, Gonorrhea, HIV, Prevention, Preventive health, Sex, Sexually transmitted infections, Stds, Sti, Trichomoniasis, Vaccines
Why Did Sexually Transmitted Infections Go up During the Pandemic — and What Can We Do About It?
Read More: Why Did Sexually Transmitted Infections Go up During the Pandemic — and What Can We Do About It?No one would blame you for assuming that the number of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) went down during the pandemic. After all, lockdowns prevented many of us from even talking to people outside our households — much less going out and having sex. In fact, reported cases of STIs did go down during the early…
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Espanol, HIV, Hivaids, Sex, Sex & relationships, Sexually transmitted diseases, Sexually transmitted infections, Stds, Sti
Envejecer con VIH
Read More: Envejecer con VIHEn 1986, Stephanie Brooks Wiggins acababa de mudarse de Brooklyn a Baltimore con quién pronto sería su esposo y estaba ansiosa de empezar su nueva vida juntos cuando le diagnosticaron con el virus de inmunodeficiencia humana (VIH). Apenas tenía 40 años. “Era muy inocente. Nunca había escuchado del VIH”, dijo Stephanie. Su preocupación más importante…
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¿Por qué los servicios médicos para el VIH no están llegando a las personas que más los necesitan?
Read More: ¿Por qué los servicios médicos para el VIH no están llegando a las personas que más los necesitan?Hydeia Broadbent nunca supo cómo era la vida sin tener VIH. Nació con VIH y en 1984 su virus se transformó en el síndrome de inmunodeficiencia adquirida (SIDA), que causó que la cantidad de sus células T (los glóbulos blancos que ayudan a proteger el cuerpo) se reduzcan a niveles peligrosos. En esa época, un…
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Why Isn’t HIV Care Reaching Those Who Need It Most?
Read More: Why Isn’t HIV Care Reaching Those Who Need It Most?Hydeia Broadbent has never known life without HIV. Born HIV positive in 1984, Broadbent’s virus progressed to Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS), which meant her T-cell (white blood cells that help protect your body) count became dangerously low. At the time, an HIV/AIDS diagnosis was often a death sentence, but Broadbent was determined to live her…
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Keeping My HIV Diagnosis a Secret for a Year Taught Me a Lot About People’s Stereotypes
Read More: Keeping My HIV Diagnosis a Secret for a Year Taught Me a Lot About People’s StereotypesAs told to Megan Margulies I drove up my driveway and put my car in park. I was finally alone, so I screamed. I had just been diagnosed with HIV. I was 36 years old, in my prime, moving and shaking with my marketing career. My next thought was, “Who’s going to marry someone who’s…
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Chlamydia, Genital herpes, Gonorrhea, HIV, Medical tests, Sex, Sexually transmitted diseases, Sexually transmitted infections, Stds, Sti, Trichomoniasis
You Can Test Yourself for an STI at Home — but Should You?
Read More: You Can Test Yourself for an STI at Home — but Should You?At-home medical testing gives you information about your health, right at your fingertips, without the need to ever set foot into a doctor’s office. One of the latest developments in this trend is at-home testing for sexually transmitted infections (STIs), which are bacterial, viral or parasitic infections that can be passed on through sexual contact.…
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Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) & Aging Survey
Read More: Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) & Aging SurveyHealthyWomen and the National Caucus and Center on Black Aging, Inc. (NCBA) are exploring what people know about HIV and aging, including diagnosis, treatment, testing, stigma and barriers to care. Changes in treatment options are increasing life expectancy for those with HIV. In 2018, over half (51%) of people in the United States with diagnosed…
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Copy of From Shame to Advocacy: My Decades-Long Journey Living — and Thriving — With HIV
Read More: Copy of From Shame to Advocacy: My Decades-Long Journey Living — and Thriving — With HIVAs told to Nicole Audrey Spector The year was 1986. I was 39 years old and newly wed to the love of my life, with whom I bought my first house. My three daughters and stepdaughter were both grown, married and doing well. I loved my job in the finance industry. My life was good…
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HIV, Hivaids, Sex, Sex & relationships, Sexually transmitted diseases, Sexually transmitted infections, Stds, Sti
Growing Older With HIV
Read More: Growing Older With HIVIn 1986, Stephanie Brooks Wiggins had just moved from Brooklyn to Baltimore with her soon-to-be husband and was excited to start their new life together when she was diagnosed with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). She was barely 40 years old. “I was very naive. I had never heard of HIV,” Brooks Wiggins said. Her biggest…
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Access, Access to health care, Affordable care act, Health insurance, HIV, Hivaids, Prevention, Preventive health, Sexually transmitted diseases, Stds
HIV Preventive Care Is Supposed to Be Free in the US. So, Why Are Some Patients Still Paying?
Read More: HIV Preventive Care Is Supposed to Be Free in the US. So, Why Are Some Patients Still Paying?By Sarah Varney, Kaiser Health News Anthony Cantu, 31, counsels patients at a San Antonio health clinic about a daily pill shown to prevent HIV infection. Last summer, he started taking the medication himself, an approach called preexposure prophylaxis, better known as PrEP. The regimen requires laboratory tests every three months to ensure the powerful…
