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
Generation Z's HIV Knowledge Gap Sparks Urgent Call for Southern Education
Older generations witnessed widespread deaths from HIV-related shame and community abandonment during the AIDS crisis; current stigma continues to impede access to testing and treatment.
The only reason I feel safe is because my mother taught me
Mark
Why does a fifteen-year-old with an HIV advocate for a mother still feel unprepared about her own sexual health?
Mimi
Because institutional education has abandoned the topic entirely. Schools won't teach it clearly, and the culture around it is so stigmatized that even proximity to knowledge doesn't guarantee understanding. Marisa had to learn from her mother what should have come from multiple sources.
Mark
The knowledge gap between Gen X and Gen Z is enormous. What happened in those twenty or thirty years?
Mimi
The medications worked. People stopped dying visibly. And the moment the crisis became less visible, the conversation stopped. Gen X came of age during the worst of it—they had to know. Gen Z was born into a world where HIV seemed solved, so nobody bothered to teach them it wasn't.
Mark
Darlene Hudson said she watched people die from shame. Is that still happening?
Mimi
Not in the same way. But the shame is still there, just quieter. People don't get tested because they're afraid. They don't talk about it. The deaths aren't from the virus anymore—they're from the silence around it.
Mark
Why is PrEP such a revelation to Gen Z when it's been available for over a decade?
Mimi
Because it's not taught anywhere. It exists in pockets—sexual health clinics, certain communities, people who work in the field. But it's not in schools, not in mainstream conversations, not in the places where young people actually learn about their bodies and their futures.
Mark
Jai The Gentlemen said HIV is always present in gay spaces. Does that mean older queer people have an advantage in understanding?
Mimi
Not an advantage—a burden they've had to carry. They can't escape it, so they've had to learn. But that's not education; that's survival. The goal should be that nobody has to learn through crisis.
Mark
What does Jerrell Hardnett mean by breaking silos?
Mimi
Right now, HIV knowledge is trapped in separate worlds—medical professionals know one thing, activists know another, young people know almost nothing. The silos keep the information from flowing where it needs to go. Breaking them means everyone talks to everyone else.
El Pulso
- A fifteen-year-old daughter of a prominent HIV advocate admits her school education was neither accurate nor consistent — exposing how even proximity to expertise cannot compensate for institutional failure.
- Older generations who watched entire church choir sections vanish during the AIDS crisis are now confronting a new and disorienting grief: young people who believe HIV is simply over.
- The conflation of HIV with queerness has created a false sense of exemption among straight youth, while simultaneously rendering queer lives invisible within their own communities — a double erasure that leaves everyone more vulnerable.
- PrEP, a tool capable of preventing HIV entirely, remains unknown to most young people outside the sexual health field, locked inside professional silos rather than flowing freely through schools, families, or public conversation.
- Advocates and report authors are calling for deliberate silo-breaking — through storytelling, journalism, and intergenerational dialogue — insisting that the present reality of people thriving with HIV must replace narratives frozen in the terror of the 1980s.
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 classified as an epidemic, the distance between what older generations survived and what younger ones have never been taught may itself be a public health crisis.
On a summer afternoon at ArtsXchange in East Point, Georgia, GLAAD brought together four generations of Black Southerners to reckon with a finding that was difficult to dismiss: only 31 percent of Generation Z felt knowledgeable about HIV, compared to 60 percent of Gen X adults. In a region where HIV remains an epidemic, the gap was not merely statistical — it was a map of everything that had gone unsaid.
Fifteen-year-old Marisa, whose mother Masonia Traylor is a well-known HIV advocate, described an education system that had either misinformed her or said nothing at all. The only reliable knowledge she had came from home. Across the table, sixty-eight-year-old Malcolm, who has lived with HIV for three decades, expressed something between bewilderment and alarm at how thoroughly the subject had vanished from young people's conversations. Regan, twenty-seven, offered an explanation: HIV had become so linguistically tied to queerness that straight people had concluded it wasn't their concern — a dangerous miscalculation in communities where queerness itself is treated as someone else's reality.
The Baby Boomers in the room carried the weight of direct witness. Darlene Hudson, an Atlanta LGBTQ advocate originally from Arkansas, remembered watching the tenor section of a church disappear entirely during the early epidemic. What troubled her now was not only the memory but the absence of urgency she observed in the present. The deaths had receded from view; the ignorance had not.
One concrete gap surfaced repeatedly: almost no one in Gen Z knew about PrEP, the medication that prevents HIV transmission. Maille, twenty, who works in sexual health education, acknowledged she would have known nothing about it had she not entered that specific field. The knowledge existed — it was simply inaccessible to anyone who hadn't stumbled into the right professional corridor.
Jerrell Hardnett, GLAAD's Associate Director of Education and Advocacy and author of the 2026 HIV Stigma Report, has lived with HIV for over a decade. He called for breaking the silos that keep this knowledge fragmented, and asked people to see what his life actually looks like now — full, present, and ongoing — rather than reaching for images frozen in the earliest years of the crisis. GLAAD's CEO Sarah Kate Ellis echoed the charge: ending HIV stigma would require storytellers, journalists, advocates, and institutions to choose visibility over silence. The conversation in East Point was one such act of opening. Whether it would be enough remained an open question.
On a summer afternoon in East Point, Georgia, four generations of Black Southerners sat down together to talk about something most of them had learned to keep quiet about. The conversation, organized by GLAAD and held at ArtsXchange, a cultural community hub, was prompted by a troubling discovery: only 31 percent of Generation Z felt knowledgeable about HIV, compared to 60 percent of Gen X adults. The gap was stark enough to demand attention, especially in a region where HIV remains classified as an epidemic.
Marisa, fifteen years old, spoke first about what she hadn't learned. Her mother, Masonia Traylor, is a prominent HIV advocate—the kind of person who has made this work her life. Yet even with that advantage, Marisa found the formal education system had failed her. "The education I received from school and anywhere else has either not been accurate or consistent," she said. "The only reason I feel safe about my sexual health is because my mother has taught me how to be. But the education provided by others has not given me the insight that I need to know." Her words hung in the room like an indictment of institutions that had simply opted out of the conversation.
Malcolm, sixty-eight, has lived with HIV for thirty years. He listened to the younger people in the room and felt something between concern and bewilderment. "I hear stigma, right? But yet I hear people thinking that HIV is over," he said. "It's interesting to me that young people are not even talking about HIV." The silence itself was a kind of danger. Regan, twenty-seven, explained why: the language around HIV had become so entangled with queerness that straight people believed it didn't concern them. "Because of the language around HIV being related to people who are queer, people think it doesn't affect them, and that's where it becomes dangerous," Regan said. "It's not talked about because we treat queerness within our community as if it's invisible or has to do with someone else, when in fact, it should concern everybody."
The Baby Boomers in the room carried a different weight. Darlene Hudson, an Arkansas native and long-time Atlanta LGBTQ advocate, remembered the early years of the epidemic with a clarity that made the room still. "I watched so many people die from shame," she said. "It was devastating. I'm thinking about a church in particular in Arkansas—the whole tenor section vanished. Those were some of my early experiences." She paused, then added something sharper: "But I'm taken aback that the continuation and urgency around education is not still happening." The deaths had stopped being visible, but the ignorance had not.
One specific gap emerged in the conversation: Gen Z had almost no knowledge of PrEP, the once-daily pill or twice-yearly injection that prevents HIV in people who don't have it. Maille, twenty, worked in sexual health education and knew the details. But she also knew something else: "I would not know that information unless I worked within the sexual health field and had a desire to pursue that dream further. If I were one of my peers that didn't know me, I would have no clue." The knowledge existed, but it was siloed away, accessible only to those who stumbled into the right spaces.
Jai The Gentlemen, forty, host of the Dear Black Gay Men podcast, offered a different perspective. For him and his generation, HIV was inescapable. "There is not a gay space that you can exist in where HIV is not front and center," he said. He had come of age when PrEP became available, when medications went from handfuls of pills to a single daily dose, when the concept of undetectable-equals-untransmittable became real. "It's a yes-and problem we're dealing with," he said. "For us, HIV is very much so sitting right in the chair next to me, and I have to deal with it every single day of my life if I want to have any sexual activity."
Jerrell Hardnett, the Associate Director of Education and Advocacy at GLAAD and author of the 2026 HIV Stigma Report, has lived with HIV for over a decade. He spoke about what needed to change: the silos had to break. "We have to start breaking these silos and having these conversations with those who are in power to understand what we can do to start supporting and pouring back into the community," he said. He wanted people to see what his life actually looked like now—not the stories from the seventies and eighties, but the present tense. "I am living a full and robust life. I want people to understand and see stories of it."
Sarah Kate Ellis, President and CEO of GLAAD, framed the challenge in her letter accompanying the report: ending HIV stigma was possible, but it would require choosing truth over misinformation, visibility over silence, empathy over fear. The work would fall to storytellers, journalists, technology platforms, digital creators, podcasters, advocates, and public health institutions. The conversation in East Point was one small act of that breaking open. Whether it would be enough remained to be seen.
Citas Notables
The only reason I feel safe about my sexual health is because my mother has taught me how to be. But the education provided by others has not given me the insight that I need to know.— Marisa, 15
I watched so many people die from shame. It was devastating. But I'm taken aback that the continuation and urgency around education is not still happening.— Darlene Hudson, Arkansas native and LGBTQ advocate
There is not a gay space that you can exist in where HIV is not front and center.— Jai The Gentlemen, 40, host of Dear Black Gay Men podcast
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