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Recognizing April 10, 2026 as National Youth HIV/AIDS Awareness Day
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WHEREAS, “National Youth HIV/AIDS Awareness Day” is a nationwide observance that calls on people to take action to invest in the health, education, and leadership of young people and highlights the fact that young people often experience worse HIV outcomes on status awareness, pre-exposure prophylaxis uptake, and health outcomes; and
WHEREAS, the National HIV/AIDS Strategy recommends children and young adults who are living with HIV need tailored and often more intensive medical and support services to support them as they grow and become young adults; and
WHEREAS, more than 40 years into the epidemic, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that in the United States, more than 1.2 million people are living with HIV, and 31,800 people were diagnosed with HIV in the United States in 2022; and
WHEREAS, young people living with HIV are the least likely of any age group to be retained in care and have a suppressed viral load and in 2022, youth aged 13 to 24 years composed 20 percent of all new HIV diagnoses in the United States; and
WHEREAS, the majority of young people living with HIV ages 13 to 24 are unaware of their HIV status and young African American gay and bisexual men are even more severely affected; and
WHEREAS, young gay and bisexual men accounted for the majority of all new HIV diagnoses in people aged 13 to 24 in 2022; and
WHEREAS, the Nation’s largest Federal program dedicated to providing care and treatment for people living with HIV was named after Ryan White, a teenager from Indiana who helped educate a nation about HIV and AIDS in the 1980s; and
WHEREAS, the Ryan White Part D Program is one of the national efforts to link young people living with HIV to medical care and support services; and
WHEREAS, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act provides youth, including those living with or impacted by HIV and AIDS, with better access to he...
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