Damian Denson

Some of the most important HIV prevention work in this country never happens in a clinic. It happens in barbershops and church basements, at ballroom houses and pride events, in mobile vans parked outside nightclubs at 1 a.m. Community-based organizations, CBOs, have been the front door of HIV prevention for decades, and a lot of that work has historically been supported with federal funding. A recent analysis from amfAR asked a straightforward question: what happens if that funding goes...

Most HIV research asks some version of: what are people doing wrong? For this study, we flipped the question: what are people doing right? We interviewed 51 HIV-negative Latino gay and bisexual men across five Southern cities — not about their risks, but about how they navigate HIV in their daily lives. A strengths-based lens, grounded in resilience theory. The backdrop is heavy: a real climate of fear around both HIV and homosexuality, with stigma and taboo actively getting in the way of...

Think about what daily oral PrEP actually demands: remember a pill every single day, keep the bottle somewhere safe, have an answer ready if someone asks what it's for. For young Black women in the South — who carry a heavy share of new HIV diagnoses — that's a lot to ask, and uptake shows it. So we asked 75 Black women, ages 18 to 34, in Atlanta, Baton Rouge, and Jackson: if you could prevent HIV without a daily pill, what would you pick? We walked them through three options: a long-acting...