With plates of food in hand and laughter echoing throughout the building, Atlanta University Center students gathered at Morehouse College on Wednesday night for an important community dialogue about sexual health and HIV, a conversation many admitted they don’t have often enough.
The evening, hosted by the LGBTQ media advocacy group GLAAD and biopharma company Gilead Sciences, is part of a series of events at HBCUs to address gaps in HIV education among Generation Z and particularly in Black communities in the South, where infection rates remain disproportionately high.
For students like Jordan Freeman, a 21-year-old education major and co-president of Morehouse’s LGBTQ student organization, Adodi, the event addressed a critical gap in campus and community conversations.
“I think this event is important to have at Morehouse and really just HBCUs in general, because, unfortunately, there is still some of that stigma around HIV,” Freeman said. “Stigmas that really grew during the HIV and AIDS epidemic of the ’80s … are still playing a role in how students have conversations about sex.”
GLAAD research shows that only 37% of Gen Z adults feel knowledgeable about HIV.
“To be able to host an event at an HBCU, a Black institution, I think is necessary,” Freeman said, adding that Morehouse continues to evolve as a space for more open dialogue. “I think this is a progressive step forward in a moment where politically … things are regressing.”
Freeman said that lack of awareness is visible even on campus.
“When I talk to freshmen … many of them have limited knowledge around PrEP [preexposure prophylaxis, a daily oral pill or injectable that can reduce the risk of acquiring HIV through sex], around just HIV in general,” he said. “The knowledge is very, very limited.”
Freeman said student-led groups like Adodi have worked to fill that gap by hosting conversations around sexual health, prevention, and testing, and often creating spaces where students can ask questions anonymously.
“The students themselves have been very, very receptive,” Freeman said.
The evening opened with a modern reenactment by local actors of a pivotal HIV-focused episode from the 1980s sitcom A Different World, and director and producer of the show, Debbie Allen, gave a brief message to the audience.
“When we did this episode in 1991, we had no support, not from the advertisers, from the studios,” Allen said via video. “It took a lot of courage to do it, but we needed to do it and that’s the world we are living in right now, so we’re proud of this episode.”
Throughout the night, speakers emphasized key public health messages: HIV is preventable through medications like PrEP, knowing your status through STI testing is imperative, people living with HIV who are on effective treatment and reach an undetectable viral load cannot transmit the virus, and that someone can still live a full life with a positive HIV diagnosis.
Naima Starr, a junior at Spelman College and co-president of its LGBTQ group, Afrékete, said that she hopes events like these will normalize conversations about sexual health across the AUC.
“A lot of times people come to college and they don’t know anything about reproductive health, reproductive justice, and it’s so taboo to speak about,” Starr said. “So I think that it’s important to have elders essentially talking and leading these conversations with us and say, ‘It’s OK to talk about this.’”
One of the speakers at the event, David Malebranche, an internal medicine physician and HIV advocate, told the audience about his HIV-positive diagnosis and how advancements in medicine have helped improve his and others lives who are living with HIV.
“We had a lot of toxic medications that had to be taken multiple times a day. … Now, most of the regimens are one pill once a day or injectables,” Malebranche said.
One of the major topics throughout the event included tackling stigma and how it still is a large barrier to people seeking the care that they need and ending the HIV epidemic.
Byron Perkins, who attended Hampton University and was the first openly LGBTQ HBCU football player, spoke at the event about his journey with PrEP and defeating stigma.
“I would really like to emphasize that to anybody who may be struggling on the journey, or anybody who may be trying to figure out how to navigate PrEP or anything like that, it is worth it,” said Perkins, who is now engaged in public speaking and using his platform to advance LGBTQ plus visibility, particularly for queer athletes. “I’ve gotten on and then I’ve gotten off, but consistency is key, because you need to be consistently healthy if you want to pursue sexual health the right way.”
Brighton Chipley, a junior and biology major at Morehouse, said that the event was personally “impactful.”
“There were some people who personally had HIV, there were people that worked in clinics. There were people that had [HIV] stories,” Chipley said. “I think especially in the climate of our world today, we need a lot of empathy and I think a big portion of empathy is understanding different perspectives.”
