Taking Action for National Women and Girls HIV/AIDS Awareness Day: What can you do?

By Jennie Anderson, AIDS.gov Communications Advisor

March 10 is National Women and Girls HIV/AIDS Awareness Day (NWGHAAD). This annual observance encourages people to take action around HIV and to educate each other about the epidemic’s impact on women and girls. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC), “Women and girls of color—especially black women and girls—bear a disproportionately heavy burden of HIV infection. In 2009, for adult and adolescent females, the rate of diagnoses of HIV infection for black females was nearly 20 times as high as the rate for white females and approximately 4 times as high as the rate for Hispanic/Latino females”.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office on Women’s Health (OWH) is the lead organizer for the day and this year’s theme is “Women and Girls Taking Action in the Fight against HIV/AIDS. What can YOU do?” Throughout March, many local organizations in the United States will hold HIV education and testing events. If you want to know what’s happening in your area, we encourage you to check out these event listings. Also, do you have a Twitter account? If so, don’t forget to use the hashtag #NWGHAAD for all of your tweets around this observance.

Are you organizing an event for NWGHAAD? Or looking for a simple way to take action? Posters, graphics, web badges, and e-cards are available on the NWGHAAD resource pages. Now it’s time for you to decide: What can you do?