The Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s “Let’s Stop HIV Together” campaign is an evidence-based campaign that aims to empower communities, partners, and health care providers to reduce HIV stigma and promote HIV testing, prevention, and treatment.
The only way to know your HIV status is to get tested. The CDC recommends that everyone between the ages of 13 and 64 get tested for HIV at least once as part of routine health care, and more often if you do things that might increase your risk for getting HIV.
Condoms are still a highly effective option to prevent both HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases (STDs). Options that prevent HIV but not other STDS include pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP). PrEP is a medicine that when taken as prescribed, can greatly reduce the risk of getting HIV from sex and injection drug use.
HIV treatment (antiretroviral therapy or ART) involves taking medicine as prescribed by a health care provider. While there is no cure for HIV, HIV treatment reduces the amount of HIV in your body and taking it as prescribed can make your viral load undetectable, which prevents you from sexually transmitting HIV to your HIV-negative partner.
Finally, reducing the stigma is also a form of prevention. Talking openly about HIV can help normalize the subject. This provides opportunities to correct misconceptions and help others learn more about HIV.
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