Pride, Power, and the Path to Ending the HIV Epidemic
By Harold J. Phillips, MRP, CEO, NMAC
Posted: June 23, 2026
Every June, we are invited to remember.
Pride Month reminds us that LGBTQ+ liberation did not begin as a celebration. It began as resistance, survival, organizing, and the refusal to disappear. Juneteenth reminds us that freedom was never simply granted. It was delayed, denied, fought for, and remains unfinished.
This June also marks 45 years since the first official report of what would later become known as AIDS. On June 5, 1981, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published a brief report describing five cases of a rare pneumonia among young gay men in Los Angeles. Two had already died. That report marked the beginning of public recognition of a crisis that would forever change public health, medicine, policy, and countless lives.
For Black and Latine LGBTQ+ communities, these histories are deeply connected. They shape how we understand freedom, power, justice, and the systems that continue to determine who has access to care, safety, dignity, and opportunity.
Fault Lines of Inequity in America
More than four decades later, we have the tools to end the HIV epidemic. We have effective treatment, powerful prevention options, testing, and decades of public health knowledge. We know what works. Yet HIV continues to follow the fault lines of inequity in America. Black and Latine communities remain disproportionately impacted. Gay and bisexual men, transgender people, and other LGBTQ+ people continue to shoulder a disproportionate burden of new diagnoses. People living in poverty, people experiencing housing instability, people without adequate healthcare coverage, and people facing racism, homophobia, transphobia, stigma, and discrimination remain less likely to benefit from the very advances that could improve or save their lives.
That reality matters not only for HIV but for the future of our nation’s health. Today, policymakers across the political spectrum talk about making America healthy. That is a goal we should all support. But America cannot be healthy if health outcomes continue to be determined by race, ZIP code, income, sexual orientation, gender identity, or housing status. Health equity is not a special interest. It is a prerequisite for a healthy America.
Ending the HIV epidemic has never been solely a biomedical challenge. It is a justice challenge. A prevention breakthrough means little if someone cannot access care. A treatment advance cannot reach its full potential if people are forced to choose between medication and rent. A national strategy cannot succeed if the communities most affected are excluded from shaping the solutions.
A Lesson on Power from Our Movements
As someone who has lived with HIV for more than two decades, I have witnessed both the extraordinary progress we have made and the devastating consequences when communities are left behind. I have seen what becomes possible when science, government, healthcare providers, and community organizations work together. I have also seen what happens when equity is treated as optional rather than essential.
The HIV movement has always understood something our country still struggles to fully embrace – public health is never separate from power. Power determines whose needs are prioritized. Power determines which communities receive investment and which are expected to do more with less. Power determines whether people encounter care or judgment when they seek help.
If we are serious about ending HIV, we must be serious about sharing power and investing in the communities most impacted. That means supporting Black and Latine LGBTQ+ leadership. It means protecting access to HIV prevention, treatment, testing, gender-affirming care, mental health services, and housing support. It means providing sustained investment in community-based organizations that have spent decades earning trust where institutions often have not. It also means embracing a broader vision of health.
Whole Person Health
People do not live single-issue lives. A person living with HIV needs more than a prescription. They need stable housing, economic opportunities, quality healthcare, mental health support, and communities where they can live safely and openly. The future of HIV policy must be rooted in whole-person health. Health is not created only in clinics and hospitals. It is created in homes, schools, workplaces, neighborhoods, and communities where people have the resources and opportunities to thrive.
Power. Justice. Community.
This Pride Month and Juneteenth, we should celebrate progress. But celebration alone is not enough. The truth is simple: we will not end HIV without equity. We will not achieve health without justice. And we will not build healthier communities without investing in the people most affected by the challenges we seek to solve.
The path to ending HIV runs through Pride. It runs through Juneteenth. It runs through Black queer leadership, trans liberation, racial justice, and health equity. It runs through community organizations that transform public health promises into reality every day.
We have the tools to end HIV. What we need now is the political will, investment, and the courage to ensure those tools reach everyone. Because ending HIV is not simply about stopping a virus. It is about fulfilling the promise of freedom. It is about making America healthier by making America more equitable. And it is about finally finishing the work that generations before us began.