National Youth HIV/AIDS Awareness Day 2

1000 youth are newly infected with HIV per month? What is happening that is causing this to happen?

Below is an interesting graphic that illiterates what states are mandated to have sex education and what states are required to give medically correct information to students. As you see there are states that are not required to give accurate information or any information at all. How do you feel about not having medically correct sex education mandated in every state?  The lack of education can lead to many youth believing the wrong thing which can lead to even more infections of HIV and STDs.

Without the proper education, how will the youth know how to properly put on a condom, how will they know about the skills to negotiate condom use with their partners, how will they know about their contraception options, HOW WILL THEY KNOW??

Many of us HIV educators are constantly encouraging sexual active youth to use condoms and to those we do reach out to, we do talk about where you can get free condoms. In Sacramento there is a cool site where you can find where free condoms are located: Condom Finder. However, what about the youth that want to buy condoms and they are locked up in the back of the store? Or what about the schools that are unwilling to have them on campus, where do they go, what do they do?  Making condoms more available to our youth without judgment is a need to help prevent unplanned pregnancies and also prevent the spread of STDs and HIV.

There are so many reasons why youth are getting infected at such a high rate which do include: access to care, stigma, the lack of education and all of this can be turned around with more people wanting to get involved and help these youth. Giving the youth better tools will help them be more educated and more aware as adults.

To all the youth out there, get tested and know your status!  Bring your friends, partners, family and anyone you may know to get tested with you.  Let’s normalize HIV and STD testing together!