World AIDS Day: Remember. Support. Unite. | Equitas Health

Blog 12/1/20

World AIDS Day: Remember. Support. Unite.

World Aids Day

Dear Equitas Health Family –

Every year on December 1 – World AIDS Day – people across the globe recommit to the fight against HIV, show support for those living with HIV, and remember those taken from us by AIDS-related illness.

This year World AIDS Day falls on Giving Tuesday, a day that Americans have come to use to kick-off holiday season generosity. While our hearts and minds are occupied with remembering those we have lost to AIDS-related illness, it would be a detriment to those we serve if we did not acknowledge that your Giving Tuesday contributions each year are critical to the work of caring for those living with HIV and ending the epidemic.

Your contribution honors those who live on in the treatments they helped develop.

During the first two decades of the AIDS crisis, people living with HIV volunteered by the thousands for clinical trials they would not live to benefit from. We owe them a debt of gratitude for the antiretroviral treatments that have made HIV a manageable chronic illness.

When you donate to an AIDS Service Organization, like Equitas Health, on World AIDS Day, you ensure that the legacy of those we’ve lost—life-saving treatment—reaches those with lives left to live.

Honor A Loved One With A Donation

Your contribution helps bring modern HIV treatment to those who need it.

  • 1,778 HIV Specialty Care patients are currently engaged in care at Equitas Health.
  • 7,000+ people living with HIV access health advocacy, housing, or linkage-to-care support through Equitas Health.
  • 87% of Equitas Health patients and clients living with HIV have achieved viral suppression—protecting immune systems from the virus, and rendering the virus untransmittable through sexual contact.
  • In 2020, 93% of patients with new diagnoses were linked to care within 30 days.
  • Our Public Policy team works to protect people from harmful practices, like copay accumulators, that threaten their ability to afford live-saving medications.

Expand Access To Treatment

Your contribution helps bring prevention resources to those left out or kept out of traditional healthcare settings.

  • Equitas Health administered 3,079 HIV tests in 2020, including 820 at-home test kits mailed to people who couldn’t access an in-person test due to transportation, social-distancing, or stigma.
  • 2,852 people accessed PrEP through our medical centers this year, many of them through TelePrEP, which we launched in January 2020 in order to broaden access.
  • Our PrEP Health Navigators helped 628 people across Ohio access programs that pay for PrEP in 2020.
  • 3,474 people used our HIV hotline services and more than 150,000 people visited OHIV.org over the course of the year.
  • Our harm reduction program, Safe Point, exchanged more than a million new syringes in 2020 with people who inject drugs.

Stop HIV In Its Tracks

You are our partner in this fight to stop HIV. Whether through advocacy, volunteerism, philanthropy, or spreading the world that Undetectable equals Untransmittable, we are grateful for all you do to build a world in which HIV cannot thrive. We look forward to gathering with you, virtually, at World AIDS Day events across the state this week. Together we will remember, support, and unite. We have come this far together, and only together will we prevail.

In solidarity,

Bill-Signature-2020

Bill Hardy
President & CEO
Pronouns: He/Him