AIDS NYC Knowledge, Care, and Community for All New Yorkers

AIDS NYC

Knowledge, Care, and Community for All New Yorkers

Latest Articles

Gatekept: The Prior Authorization Maze Standing Between HIV-Positive New Yorkers and the Medications They Need Now
Living with HIV

Gatekept: The Prior Authorization Maze Standing Between HIV-Positive New Yorkers and the Medications They Need Now

For thousands of HIV-positive New Yorkers, the hardest part of starting treatment is not the diagnosis — it is navigating a labyrinthine insurance approval process that can delay life-saving medication by weeks. Prior authorization requirements, once a minor bureaucratic hurdle, have become a structural barrier that providers, patients, and advocates are fighting to dismantle.
After the Diagnosis: Reclaiming Desire, Trust, and Intimacy When HIV Changes Everything
Living with HIV

After the Diagnosis: Reclaiming Desire, Trust, and Intimacy When HIV Changes Everything

An HIV diagnosis can fracture a person's sense of self long before it touches their body—and nowhere is that rupture felt more acutely than in intimate relationships. For New Yorkers navigating disclosure, desire, and vulnerability after diagnosis, the distance between medical reassurance and emotional reality can feel vast. This article examines the psychological, relational, and practical dimensions of rebuilding a sexual identity in a city that rarely makes space for that conversation.
Motherhood Is Not a Medical Risk: The Broken Conversation Around Pregnancy and HIV in New York City
Living with HIV

Motherhood Is Not a Medical Risk: The Broken Conversation Around Pregnancy and HIV in New York City

HIV-positive women in New York City are increasingly capable of carrying healthy pregnancies and raising children without transmitting the virus — yet many are still receiving outdated, stigmatizing guidance from the very clinicians they trust. This investigation examines the persistent gap between what modern HIV medicine makes possible and what women are actually told when they walk into a clinic with a pregnancy question.
When Prescriptions Collide: The Dangerous Drug Interaction Crisis Hidden Inside HIV Care
Living with HIV

When Prescriptions Collide: The Dangerous Drug Interaction Crisis Hidden Inside HIV Care

For thousands of New Yorkers managing HIV alongside other chronic conditions, the greatest threat to their health may not be the virus itself — it may be sitting inside their own medicine cabinet. Antiretroviral medications interact with dozens of common prescriptions in ways that most patients are never warned about, creating a silent crisis that clinicians, pharmacists, and the healthcare system at large have been slow to address.
Living with HIV

Beyond Viral Load: The Side Effect Conversation That HIV Clinics in New York Are Still Refusing to Have

Modern antiretroviral therapy has transformed HIV from a death sentence into a manageable chronic condition — but the daily physical and psychological costs of that management are rarely discussed openly in clinical settings. For thousands of New Yorkers on HIV treatment, side effects ranging from metabolic disruption to sexual dysfunction represent a quiet, ongoing crisis. This article examines what those trade-offs look like in practice, what alternatives exist, and why honest conversations be
Gray Area: Why New York's Primary Care System Is Failing Older Adults With HIV
Living with HIV

Gray Area: Why New York's Primary Care System Is Failing Older Adults With HIV

Older New Yorkers are being diagnosed with HIV later, treated less aggressively, and left without adequate support—largely because the physicians who see them most often are not looking. A growing body of evidence suggests that age-related blind spots in primary care are quietly sustaining an epidemic that the city has long claimed to be ending.
Seen but Unseen: The Systemic Failures Leaving Black Women in New York City Without Timely HIV Diagnoses
Living with HIV

Seen but Unseen: The Systemic Failures Leaving Black Women in New York City Without Timely HIV Diagnoses

Black women in New York City are disproportionately receiving HIV diagnoses years after initial infection — not because they avoided care, but because the care system repeatedly failed to see them clearly. A convergence of medical racism, gynecological blind spots, and deeply entrenched stigma is costing women in this city precious years of early treatment. This investigation examines the structural forces behind that silence and the advocates fighting to dismantle them.
Tested Out of Reach: How HIV Screening Has Vanished From New York's Outer Boroughs
Prevention & Access

Tested Out of Reach: How HIV Screening Has Vanished From New York's Outer Boroughs

Across the Bronx, eastern Queens, and Staten Island's North Shore, reliable HIV testing has become increasingly difficult to find — not because the need has diminished, but because the infrastructure supporting early detection has quietly collapsed. Clinic closures, chronic underfunding, and fractured transportation networks have conspired to create vast testing deserts where residents must travel miles, or simply go without. This investigation examines what has been lost, who bears the cost, an
Missed at the Moment of Crisis: How NYC Emergency Rooms Are Overlooking HIV When It Matters Most
Prevention & Access

Missed at the Moment of Crisis: How NYC Emergency Rooms Are Overlooking HIV When It Matters Most

Every day, New Yorkers arrive at emergency departments with pneumonia, severe weight loss, or recurring infections — and leave without ever receiving an HIV test. A systemic failure in routine screening protocols, compounded by clinical stigma and institutional inertia, is allowing a preventable crisis to deepen inside the very institutions meant to catch it.
No Address, No Adherence: The Housing Crisis That Is Breaking HIV Treatment in New York City
Living with HIV

No Address, No Adherence: The Housing Crisis That Is Breaking HIV Treatment in New York City

For thousands of New Yorkers living with HIV, stable housing is not a comfort—it is a clinical necessity. Without a fixed address, maintaining the daily medication schedules, refrigeration requirements, and mental health stability that effective HIV treatment demands becomes nearly impossible. This investigation examines the devastating intersection of housing insecurity and treatment failure across the five boroughs.
What Young New Yorkers Are Never Taught: The Dangerous Silence Around HIV in City Classrooms
Prevention & Access

What Young New Yorkers Are Never Taught: The Dangerous Silence Around HIV in City Classrooms

Across New York City's public schools, sex education curricula are leaving students without the foundational knowledge they need to protect themselves from HIV. From outdated transmission myths to near-total silence on PrEP and U=U, the gaps are not accidental — they are structural. And young New Yorkers are paying the price.
Beyond the Clinic Walls: The Peer-Led Harm Reduction Networks Quietly Keeping New Yorkers Alive
Prevention & Access

Beyond the Clinic Walls: The Peer-Led Harm Reduction Networks Quietly Keeping New Yorkers Alive

Across New York City's most underserved neighborhoods, small networks of activists and community members are delivering syringe exchanges, drug checking, and wound care to people with HIV and substance use disorders whom official systems have long overlooked. Operating in legal gray zones and on shoestring budgets, these grassroots efforts represent both a public health triumph and an indictment of the institutions that should have acted decades ago.
Two Viruses, One Body: How HIV-Positive New Yorkers Are Confronting the Long COVID Crisis Alone
Living with HIV

Two Viruses, One Body: How HIV-Positive New Yorkers Are Confronting the Long COVID Crisis Alone

For HIV-positive New Yorkers, a COVID-19 infection rarely ends when the fever breaks. Thousands are now managing overlapping conditions that the medical establishment is only beginning to understand, often without adequate clinical guidance or coordinated care.
Employed but Exposed: The Quiet Workplace Reckoning Facing HIV-Positive New Yorkers
Living with HIV

Employed but Exposed: The Quiet Workplace Reckoning Facing HIV-Positive New Yorkers

Federal and state law promise protection for HIV-positive workers, but the distance between legal rights and lived reality remains vast for many New Yorkers. Informal retaliation, forced medical leave, and career stagnation continue to define the professional lives of people navigating disclosure without adequate safeguards. This piece examines the structural failures—and the hard-won strategies—shaping HIV-positive employment in New York City today.
Counting Pills to Pay Rent: The Financial Crisis Quietly Undermining HIV Care in New York City
Living with HIV

Counting Pills to Pay Rent: The Financial Crisis Quietly Undermining HIV Care in New York City

Across New York City, people living with HIV are making impossible calculations—skipping doses to stretch a prescription, or abandoning treatment altogether when assistance programs run dry. This investigation examines the structural failures driving medication unaffordability and maps the resources that remain for New Yorkers caught in the gap.
Falling Through the Cracks: What Happens to New Yorkers the Moment PrEP Stops Working
Prevention & Access

Falling Through the Cracks: What Happens to New Yorkers the Moment PrEP Stops Working

For many New Yorkers, a new HIV diagnosis doesn't just change their health status—it dismantles the entire care infrastructure they relied upon. The systems built around prevention were never designed to catch people on the other side of it, and the consequences of that gap are measurable, painful, and preventable.
Still Here: The Long-Term HIV Survivors Aging in a City That Never Planned for Them
Living with HIV

Still Here: The Long-Term HIV Survivors Aging in a City That Never Planned for Them

They survived a plague that killed their friends, endured decades of treatment, and outlived every prognosis. Now, New York City's long-term HIV survivors are confronting a new crisis: a healthcare system, a housing market, and an aging services infrastructure that was never built with them in mind.
A Crisis by Design: Confronting the Structural Forces Fueling HIV Inequity Among Black and Latino New Yorkers
Prevention & Access

A Crisis by Design: Confronting the Structural Forces Fueling HIV Inequity Among Black and Latino New Yorkers

HIV does not discriminate — but the systems meant to prevent and treat it often do. Black and Latino New Yorkers continue to face disproportionately high rates of new HIV diagnoses and HIV-related mortality, not because of individual behavior, but because of deeply embedded structural failures. This investigation examines the data, the lived experiences, and the targeted interventions that public health experts say can actually change the trajectory.
Healing the Whole Person: A Guide to Mental Health Support for HIV-Positive New Yorkers
Living with HIV

Healing the Whole Person: A Guide to Mental Health Support for HIV-Positive New Yorkers

An HIV diagnosis rarely arrives alone. For many New Yorkers, it brings depression, anxiety, grief, and trauma that can be just as difficult to manage as the virus itself. This practical guide maps out the mental health resources available across the five boroughs — from specialized therapy and peer support groups to psychiatric care and crisis services — and offers firsthand perspectives from HIV-positive New Yorkers who have navigated the system, in all its complexity.
Mpox and HIV: A Practical Guide for New Yorkers Who Cannot Afford to Wait for Clarity
Prevention & Access

Mpox and HIV: A Practical Guide for New Yorkers Who Cannot Afford to Wait for Clarity

For HIV-positive New Yorkers — especially those with lower CD4 counts or unsuppressed viral loads — mpox presents a distinct and serious set of risks that demand specific, actionable information. This guide cuts through the noise to explain what immunocompromised individuals genuinely need to know about transmission, symptoms, vaccination, and treatment, drawing on current medical guidance and the voices of community members who have already navigated this terrain.