HIV positive youth travel through 25 states promoting HIV Testing & Awareness Leading up to World AI
For Immediate Release
July 24, 2006
Contact:
Tom Donohue
Founder & Executive Director
tdonohue@whospositive.org
Tel. 814-861-3345 ext 3501
Who’s Positive LauncHes NATIONAL YOUTH HIV screening & Awareness campaign
HIV positive youth travel through 25 states promoting HIV Testing & Awareness Leading up to World AIDS Day
State College, PA (July 24, 2006) -- HALF of all new HIV infections occur in YOUTH. For this reason, Who’s Positive announces OPERATION GET TESTED: Infected, Affected. Real Stories, Real People, a nationwide campaign to humanize HIV; prevent and reduce infection rates among youth; and empower, encourage, and provide an opportunity for youth to be tested for HIV.
Beginning on October 15, on National Latino HIV Awareness Day, six HIV positive youth (ages 18-26), five staff, and one reporter will board a 12-person sleeper tour bus to embark on a 48-day trip, ending on December 1 - World AIDS Day. The group will travel the United States from New York to California, stopping at 35 high schools and colleges in 25 states. The tour will also provide the opportunity for young adults to get tested for HIV along each stop. Who’s Positive is currently conducting nationwide interviews, in search of diverse young adults ages 18-26, to join the tour. Applications and tour stop requests can be submitted through the organization’s website at http://www.whospositive.org.
“This fresh, new approach to HIV prevention allows youth to talk to youth - no statistics, no lectures, just stories,” says Tom Donohue, founder and executive director of Who’s Positive. “It’s peers telling peers about their own challenges of living with HIV. It provides a powerful and real way to get young adults to think about something very important: what it would be like if they were HIV positive.”
In the U.S., half of all new HIV infections occur in people under age 25; one-fourth in people under the age of 21. Each year U.S. youth under age 20 experience nearly four million sexually transmitted infections. According to the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention HIV/AIDS Surveillance Report 2002, in youth ages 20 to 24, 64 percent of reported HIV infections occurred among young men and 36 percent among young women; 53 percent among non-Hispanic black youth; 35 percent among non-Hispanic whites; and 10 percent among Latino young adults.
“I refuse to be ashamed of my mistakes,” says Kahlo Benavidez, 20, of Las Cruces, N.M., and a sophomore at New Mexico State University who plans to embark on the tour. “I refuse to hide something that some people think I should. I refuse to let others make the same mistakes I made without knowing what the consequences could be.”
The Latino Commission on AIDS, an organizational endorser of the tour, understands the importance of youth reaching out to their peers. Wesley Tahsir-Rodriguez, Director of Health Policy says, “Having a tour of diverse HIV positive youth speaking to an audience of their peers will lessen the stigma associated with an HIV test. By including a young Latino man like Kahlo, we hope to increase the scope of the tour and reach Latino youth. Latinos are more inclined to take heed to advice from someone that understands what they go through on a daily basis. This tour can also help fight the stigmas that HIV positive Latinos face.”
Janine Plavac, Director of the Academy of Health Professions in Gainesville, Florida - a stop along the tour - says, “Many high school students don’t think that they can get HIV/AIDS. In fact, any student who is sexually active is putting themselves at risk. Many are cavalier about oral sex, because they don’t think it is sex. The group on this tour will easily connect with our student population. This is the prevention we need - peers talking to peers!”
Who's Positive is especially thankful to OraSure Technologies, the manufacturer of the OraQuick® ADVANCE™ Rapid HIV-1/2 Antibody Test and Roche and for supporting efforts to elevate disease awareness and encourage testing among America's youth through Operation Get Tested.
Founded in 2003, Who’s Positive is a national non-profit organization which foregrounds the reality of living with HIV through first-hand accounts of young adults coping with the disease. In telling the stories of people living with HIV, Who's Positive hopes to reduce the transmission of HIV among teens and young adults-a population with one of the fastest growing infection rates.
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