National Latinx AIDS Awareness Day (NLAAD) 2019 is marked Tuesday, October 15. NLAAD was founded in 2003 by the Latino Commission on AIDS and the Hispanic Federation to promote HIV testing and education among Latinos. October 15 coincides with the last day of Hispanic Heritage Month.

NLAAD 2019 materials

Download 2019 campaign graphics on NLAAD.orgCourtesy of NLAAD.org

This year’s theme is “Living with HIV or not…we’re fighting this together.” The campaign, according to NLAAD.org, “wants to address that people of either HIV status have a say on ending HIV, in stopping new diagnoses. The campaign wants to break the stigma that only one group bears the responsibility.”

That’s why images of the 2019 campaign show two boxing gloves bumping up against each other. One has a plus sign and the other has a minus sign; together they form a heart, showing that people living with and without HIV complement each other and can join a unified fight against the epidemic.

Watch the launch of the 2019 NLAAD campaign in New York City:

Latinx (pronounced “La-teen-ex”) is a gender-neutral alternative to Latino and Latina. 

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Latino men who have sex with men (MSM) are the second-most affected subpopulation in the United States, after Black MSM. Overall, Latinos made up 18 % of the U.S population but accounted for 26% of new HIV diagnoses in 2016; among those, 87% were among men.

As the awareness video at the top of this article states, PrEP, or pre-exposure prophylaxis, is one way that people who are HIV negative and at risk of the virus can stay negative. PrEP is a daily pill that can reduce the risk of getting HIV by more than 99%. Two meds have been approved as PrEP: Truvada and Descovy. For more, click here.

Meanwhile, people who are living with HIV can contribute to ending the epidemic by taking daily meds to suppress the virus. People with an undetectable viral load cannot transmit HIV via sex, a fact known as Undetectable Equals Untransmittable, or U=U.

In conjunction with NLAAD, many organizations offer HIV testing and related events. Visit NLAAD.org to learn more and download infographics like the ones in these tweets posted in this article.