April 18, 2017
April 18 is National Transgender HIV Testing Day
Eric Brus READ TIME: 2 MIN.
The second annual National Transgender HIV Testing Day (NTHTD) will be observed on Tuesday, April 18. The event is being organized by the University of California-San Francisco's Center of Excellence for Transgender Health (CoE).
According to the CoE, "NTHTD is a day to recognize the importance of routine HIV testing, status awareness, and continued focus on HIV prevention and treatment efforts among transgender people. This initiative encourages community-based organizations, health jurisdictions, and HIV prevention programs to participate by hosting local trans HIV testing community events (HIV testing, visibility campaign, community forums) and/or develop trans-specific HIV testing campaign materials and resources."
As part of the NTHTD initiative, the CoE has developed a Transgender HIV Testing Toolkit, which includes five modules "designed to reflect the most current HIV prevention research and best practices for serving trans and gender non-binary people."
The modules are: 1) Get the Facts about Trans People and HIV; 2) Testing and Enhanced Communication Approaches with Trans People; 3) Building Capacity to Increase HIV Testing Efforts for Trans People; 4) Community Engagement and National HIV Transgender HIV Testing Day; and 5) NTHTD and Toolkit Resources.
The CoE has also produced a number of other resources for the testing day, including a condensed toolkit for health departments, testing placards in English and Spanish, and a series of flyers to promote testing.
RESOURCES:
To support activities commemorating NTHTD, we have compiled an annotated list of online resources focusing on HIV/AIDS among transgender people.
Eric Brus writes about HIV policy. His HIV/AIDS Disparities Report is produced by the New England AIDS Education and Training Center Minority AIDS Initiative Project. The full version is available here.
