World AIDS Day dinner commemorates lives lost to HIV

The annual World AIDS Day dinner took place on Thursday in the Gilman Atrium. The event, which was presented by Sigma Gamma Rho Sorority, Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity and the Office of LGBTQ Life, aimed to disseminate more information about AIDS and its treatments while stressing the importance of destigmatizing the illness.

The dinner featured special guest speaker Anastasia Pierron, a performance by Latin dance group Baila! and spoken word poet Mary Bowman.

Attendees received dinner as well as free sexual health goodie bags and STI testing, courtesy of Project RE_. Christianne Marguerite, the president of Sigma Gamma Rho, discussed the purpose of the dinner.

“The JHU community is committed to the awareness of HIV/AIDS on today, World AIDS Day, and always,” she said.

Guest speaker Anastasia Pierron, a Class of 2014 alumna with a bachelor’s degree in Public Health, has worked in the field of HIV/AIDS for over four years. Pierron began her speech by asking her audience for a moment of silence.

“Today... is a day we commemorate the millions of lives lost to HIV/AIDS,” Pierron said.

Significant progress has been made on AIDS treatment protocols, clinical and behavioral research and HIV and STI testing. While these advancements have been essential, Pierron believes more work that needs to be done with increasing HIV awareness, prevention and treatment.

Pierron emphasized that there are people living with HIV who are not even aware of it, especially among young people. She highlighted that HIV/AIDS disproportionately affects certain populations including people of color, the LGBTQ community, people in sex work and people in the prison system.

“It is estimated that 1.2 million people in the United States are living with HIV. And nearly one in eight of those are not aware that they’re infected. In addition, as many as 50,000 people still become newly infected each year,” Pierron said. “Among those newly diagnosed with HIV in the state of Maryland, the proportion of those in the age range of 20-29 have nearly doubled, from 16 percent in 2003 to 31 percent in 2012.”

Pierron now works as the case manager for the adult PREP Program for HIV prevention at the Johns Hopkins Memorial Clinic.

“For those of you who have not heard about PREP, it stands for pre-exposure prophylactic. It is a daily pill that when taken can be over 90 percent effective for preventing an HIV infection,” she said.

Pierron hopes that by sharing her experience, she can show that it is possible for anyone to get involved and play a role in helping to end HIV/AIDS.

She stressed that people can get involved in a countless number of ways to help end the illness. They can do this by getting tested, becoming educated about the facts of the virus, using forms of protection such as condoms or PREP amd even volunteering with a community organization that serves people living with HIV.

“If one day you want to live in a world where there are no more instances of HIV, then we need to act now, and it starts with you,” Pierron said.

Mary Bowman, a spoken word poet from Washington D.C., drew on personal experience of living with HIV. She advocates for HIV/AIDS awareness and prevention all over the United States. Bowman’s first poem focused on how her biological mother died from AIDS related illness.

“To place blame on the ignorant would be futile / so we as daughters of the incompetence search for knowledge in the wild / and pray / that our attempts to move on through the pain / produce healing sorrow for the cuts and scrapes that we’ve endured / on behalf of our mothers,” Bowman said.

Sophomore Bryan Li came to the dinner because he wanted to know more about AIDS.

“I found the parts about PREP interesting, because I didn’t really know those had existed prior to the World AIDS Day dinner. Events like these better educate students on issues that affect people on a worldwide scale,” Li said.

Senior Kyoung-A Cho learned a lot from the event and enjoyed seeing people come out from the Hopkins community to attend it.

“I think it’s really important to have events like this because a lot of students become so engulfed with student life and work and classes that we forget what’s happening in the world. Events like these really help you refocus on important issues happening in the community.” Cho said.

Junior Tony Melo went to the event because he wanted to find ways to get involved in issues that matter to him.

“I thought it was great that PREP was actually talked about as a resource for preventing the spread of HIV/AIDS as an addition to promoting safe sex,” Melo said.

He felt that the event was important in increasing awareness about HIV/AIDS within the Hopkins community, especially among those who might be more ignorant about the nature of the illness.

“While I might take it upon myself to research these things, most people don’t even know things like PREP even exist. The way I see it, if you teach at least one person something new, you’ve accomplished something huge.”