Generation Z's HIV Knowledge Gap Sparks Urgent Call for Southern Education

In East Point, Georgia, four generations of Black Southerners gathered this summer to confront a silence that has quietly grown more dangerous than the epidemic it surrounds: only 31 percent of Generation Z feel informed about HIV, even as their elders carry the grief of watching entire communities disappear from shame. GLAAD's 2026 HIV Stigma Report gave the gathering its occasion, but the conversation revealed something older and more persistent — that knowledge, like grief, does not automatically pass between generations unless someone chooses to speak. In a region where HIV remains classif