Mejia stressed that a pressing concern for HIV awareness in the United States is to continue emphasizing testing and prevention.
"Those who are not positive should get tested if they're sexually active and not using protection," she said. "Always get tested at least every six months. It's free and it's available, especially in the United States, right? So if you find that you do have HIV, you can get on treatment immediately, which is something that's helped."
Many people want to know if and when a cure for HIV, including a possible vaccine to prevent the virus, will be available. This conversation brings up challenging medical questions but also creates room for oversight of addressable issues on the table for HIV-positive people today.
For example, recent historical events have had consequences on the HIV-positive community and its supporters. The impact of broader social health problems can be felt emotionally and spiritually by people who understand the devastating impact HIV can still have on survivors.
"Mental health is a huge issue right now," Mejia explained. "We all have a collective trauma because of COVID and the things that COVID brought, which is that it isolated many of us. A lot of my friends, last year alone, like 30 of my friends died; half suicide and the other half was, again, cancer diagnostics. For some, it's been a huge loss."
Despite successes and breakthroughs in the search for an HIV vaccine and cure, those options are not ready for the public.
Yet the horizon doesn't necessarily have to look bleak when you squint at the future of HIV. There are many victories to celebrate and an abundance of knowledge to soak up and use so HIV can be a fully suppressed condition with almost no chance of transmission.
Resources may be difficult for some people to access but they are available. The more people undergo testing and use resources like PrEP—pre-exposure prophylaxis can reduce your chance of getting HIV from sex or injection drug use—the brighter the future will become in regard to HIV transmission and diagnosis rates.
Solid science is only half the battle, however, as it's well known that public awareness of HIV and AIDS is still steeped in stigmatizing language and false impressions.
What do we do to combat that aspect of the problems associated with HIV? How do we normalize awareness and education the same way we have normalized living with HIV by creating a world where U=U?
When taken as prescribed, HIV medications can decrease the amount of HIV present in a person's blood—also known as their "HIV viral load"—to the point where it's too low to measure or detect. Being undetectable prevents HIV disease from progressing and allows people to live long and healthy lives.
It also protects the health of their sex partners. People cannot pass HIV through sex when they have undetectable levels of HIV. This is known as Undetectable = Untransmittable (U=U).