POZ • June 28, 2021 Fight With Us As a legal fellow in the early 2000s, Dafina Ward worked on a class-action lawsuit seeking access to health care for incarcerated people in rural county jails.
Real Health • June 1, 2021 Period Pain Too Much? Might Be Uterine Fibroids Dearra Williams used to think the heavy bleeding and intense pain she experienced during her period was normal. Then in January 2020, she landed in the hospital and was diagnosed with uterine fibroids.
POZ • May 17, 2021 The Activist Doctor Demetre Daskalakis, MD, MPH, remembers the day he felt called to become an HIV doctor: April 23, 1995. He was a college student working on a display for the AIDS Memorial Quilt when he witnessed people paying homage to their lost loved ones.
POZ • May 14, 2021 Interacting With Your Doctor Having a good relationship with your doctor is key to living healthy with HIV. To that end, here are some tips from long-term survivors on how to build and maintain a positive doctor-patient rapport.
POZ • May 14, 2021 Protecting Your Mental Health Mental health plays an important role in how people with HIV navigate life with the virus. A negative mental state can affect treatment adherence, relationships and, most important, self-esteem. Below are testimonies from long-term survivors about how to manage your mental health while living with HIV.
POZ • May 14, 2021 Healthy Living With HIV As a young man who tested positive for HIV in 1987, at age 21, Robert Gillum never saw his condition as a death sentence.
Real Health • April 1, 2021 ER Visits, Heavy Bleeding, Painful Sex, Surgeries and Fertility Issues In 2008, Erica Taylor finally sought help for her persistent menstrual cycle issues. She experienced heavy and prolonged periods that lasted between 10 and 15 days as well as sporadic episodes of bleeding every month.
POZ • March 29, 2021 Operation D-REK At age 16, Derek Canas, of Brunswick, Georgia, stood 4 foot 1 and weighed 55 pounds and was much smaller than his peers. For years, his parents voiced concerns about his size, but doctors never seemed alarmed. It wasn’t until 2001, when a medical student suggested he take an HIV test, that Canas learned that he had AIDS.
POZ • March 29, 2021 Raising HIV Awareness Among Young People Deondre Moore had no idea that a Thursday night out with friends in Houston in 2014 would end with him testing positive for HIV. At 19 years old, the African-American college student was hanging out at a local hot spot when he noticed the venue was offering HIV testing.
POZ • February 15, 2021 Women’s Empowerment When Shirlene Cooper was diagnosed with AIDS in 1996, she hardly had time to come to terms with her status. Shortly thereafter, her doctors told her she had other pressing health issues.
POZ • January 4, 2021 Black Voices Matter While growing up in Los Angeles County, Raniyah Copeland, MPH, learned about Black liberation and the importance of making the world a better place for Black people. To that end, she vowed to ensure African Americans would live long and healthy lives.
Real Health • January 1, 2021 I Thought Bleeding for Two Weeks Straight Was Normal—It Wasn't In 2013, 35-year-old Stephanie Francis was rushed to the hospital with severe blood loss. After a procedure to stop the bleeding and an ultrasound, she learned she had uterine fibroids, noncancerous growths in the uterus.
POZ • November 16, 2020 Experts Matter Long before Anthony Fauci, MD, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), garnered global recognition for his response to COVID-19 in the United States, he was well-known as a leader in the fight against AIDS.
POZ • November 2, 2020 Body Positive When Robert Gillum tested HIV positive in 1987, he was incarcerated and facing 30 to 60 years in prison. He was only 21 years old.
POZ • November 2, 2020 For Good Measure Lepena Reid tested HIV positive in 1988, after spending the early ’80s caring for friends and others living with the virus and working with AIDS organizations.
POZ • September 28, 2020 Translatina Proud Cristina Herrera moved to New York City in 1985, during the height of the crack cocaine and AIDS epidemics. At 16 years old, just as she was beginning her journey as a trans woman, she saw some of her peers fight addiction and die of AIDS-related causes.
POZ • September 14, 2020 Aging Positively When the first HIV test became available in 1985, John McLay took it and tested positive. The result didn’t surprise him; he was sure he had been living with the virus for three years.
POZ • August 17, 2020 Community Resilience As a labor lawyer living with HIV in the 1980s, Jesse Milan Jr. used his expertise to help protect and advance the rights of HIV-positive people.
POZ • June 29, 2020 Invaluable Treasure Charles King’s passion for helping the homeless was ignited during his early days as a Baptist minister in San Antonio. But it wasn’t until he joined ACT UP New York in the late-1980s that he connected his fight for the homeless to his fight for people living with HIV.
POZ • May 18, 2020 Centering Our Voices As a professor at California State University San Marcos, Andrew Spieldenner, PhD, begins every semester by telling his students that he is a gay man of color living with HIV. Spieldenner’s confidence to speak his truth dates back to when he first came out to his family as a young adult.
