Each year on April 10, National Youth HIV/AIDS Awareness Day (NYHAAD) serves as a vital reminder that the fight to end the HIV epidemic must center on the next generation. Currently, young people aged 13–24 account for approximately 20% of all new HIV diagnoses in the United States (CDC, 2023). Within this group, transgender youth — particularly youth of color — face staggering disparities. National surveillance data indicate that nearly half of all transgender women (42%) surveyed in major urban areas are living with HIV, with the prevalence being even higher among Black (62%) and Latine (35%) transgender women (CDC, 2021).
Furthermore, research suggests that transgender and gender-diverse youth are significantly more likely to be living with HIV than their cisgender peers, often due to a systemic lack of gender-affirming healthcare, housing instability, and the absence of inclusive sex education (Johns et al., 2019). To truly move the needle on these rates, we must follow the lead of those working on the frontlines to build spaces of belonging and health sovereignty. This year, we are honored to uplift the work of trans rights and HIV activist Andy Tinoco (they/he), a fellow for AIDS United’s Transgender Leadership Initiative. Based in San Antonio, Texas, Andy’s work as an organizer and artist highlights the essential need for community-led education and the expansion of life-saving resources for queer and trans communities of color throughout the South.
It is more imperative than ever that public health evolves as we navigate our current sociopolitical climate. Trans and HIV-affected communities are struggling during these unprecedented times, which forces health advocates and public health professionals to intersectionally rethink the strategies we use to deliver quality and affirming healthcare and address the ongoing HIV crisis. Federal and state-level attacks on trans rights and cuts in HIV funds necessitate trans-led communal models of HIV care and support. As a transmasculine nonbinary Latine in Texas, I offer the following reflections I have gathered as a community member and HIV advocate to help us disrupt the systems that actively erase us and chart a path forward that ensures vital care is affirming, affordable, and accessible to everyone.
The current legislative environment is perilous for trans and HIV-affected populations. The Trump administration has cut over $1.5 billion in HIV funding, which will increase HIV diagnoses over time (HIV + HEP Policy Institute, 2025). Trans southern communities may bear the brunt of these cuts; trans southerners make up 43% of all new HIV diagnoses among trans people (CDC, 2024). Here in Texas, we have some of the most hostile anti-trans laws, which mark us as a “do not travel” state for trans people (Reed, 2026). This legislation oppresses us in many ways, such as banning us from government-funded restrooms and prohibiting us from legally changing our gender markers. These anti-trans laws have negatively affected me and other members of my trans community in this state. Therefore, as trans people living in Texas, we must resist by creating community-led models of HIV prevention and care.
In response to the legislative environment’s toxicity towards us, the Texan trans community has innovated how we deliver healthcare to prevent HIV and support those of us who are already living with HIV. I have been involved with SAGA (San Antonio Gender Association), which provides support for trans and non-binary people in San Antonio. SAGA collaborated with Operation BRAVE to educate community members about HIV and to link SAGA members to HIV services. It was through BRAVE that I learned about their partner clinics, which I visited as part of my service-learning project (SLP) through AIDS United’s Transgender Leadership Initiative. Mainstream healthcare providers here often assume people know where to access care when it is not always so, and SAGA met our need for resource awareness by partnering with BRAVE.
Moreover, the trans-led Pride Center in San Antonio, which is where SAGA meetings occur, has a resource library where community members can find LGBTQIA+ friendly HIV services. The center also offers HIV resource flyers, and I visited a clinic for my SLP through these flyers. Most importantly, the Pride Center offers free HIV at-home testing kits that can be picked up or mailed. According to the Center’s director, this is “another opportunity to increase equitable access, improve disparities, and work towards ending HIV” (Salinas, 2022).
Virtual communal spaces can also innovate HIV advocacy. I believe the only thing that will save us during these dark times is community-building. That is why I joined Transcendants, a local trans Discord server shared by SAGA, where individuals can share resources related to HIV care, housing, and other needs.
Lastly, in a world where trans rights are treated as secondary in public health, trans liberation is not possible if the systems that ensure our communities can live healthy lives, uninterrupted by illness, are not also championing the rights and well-being of transgender people. Our transness asks public health to make amends for their medically inaccurate assumptions. The way nonbinary people defy rigid sex and gender binaries challenges medical biases, which improves care not just for HIV+ nonbinary people, but also for HIV+ intersex individuals, two-spirit folks, and everyone else. Thus, when we dismantle white-cishetero-patriarchal medical assumptions through trans liberation, we become closer to ending the HIV epidemic.
About the Author: Andy Tinoco Méndez (they/he) is an HIV advocate, community member, poet, and artist. They are a queer, nonbinary, disabled Mexican of mixed indigenous descent living in San Antonio, TX. They form a part of their local activist community in SATX, and are passionate about expanding access to vital resources for queer and trans communities of color in the South, including access to HIV healthcare, gender affirming care, and education.
This article was made possible with the support of the We Are United Initiative, a project of the Conexiones Positivas Fund at AIDS United, through its collaboration with the Let’s Stop HIV Together Initiative. Click here to learn more about the Let’s Stop HIV Together Initiative.