GLAAD Releases HIV Stigma Study for World AIDS Day

Annually, December 1 is World AIDS Day and to commemorate, GLAAD released a 2022 State of HIV Stigma Study. This four-page study, released annually, has been tracking HIV stigma annually since 2020, focuses on attitudes of Americans and knowledge of HIV.

Not surprising to those afflicted and most likely to be at risk will not be surprised, but maybe encouraged, that more than 87 percent of American adults agree there is ongoing stigma around HIV. The study also found that only half of those surveyed felt "knowledgeable" about HIV including causes, treatments and impacts to lives and quality of lives.

GLAAD conducted the study online in February 2022 and interviewed a sample of 2,536 U.S. adults 18 and over. CINT, the world’s largest consumer network for digital survey-based research, collected and sourced the samples.

The most encouraging but still low statistic was 43 percent of adults felt more comfortable interacting with HIV-positive people, which was an increase from 36 percent when the report first started in 2020. Most encouraging is there is an increased understanding of PrEP benefits for preventing HIV. In addition, there is a growing understanding of undetectable equals untransmittable (U=U), which means an HIV-positive person adhering to an antiretroviral regimen cannot pass the virus to another individual.

In their press release, GLAAD President and CEO, Sarah Kate Ellis, said, “GLAAD’s study notes where we have made progress and where we need to dramatically accelerate public health messaging about HIV and visibility about HIV in the media for it to be understood as the treatable, untransmittable and preventable condition that it is.”

The GLAAD report was funded by the Gilead COMPASS Initiative and comes on the heels of GLAAD’s “Invisible People” report in October. For complete overview read story on HIVPlus.com