I grew up in a small town in Northeastern Ohio that believes in strictly abstinence-based sex education and no mention of LGBTQ+ relationships, let alone sex education. It wasn't until I went to Cleveland State for my first year that I really started learning about HIV/AIDS.

I had to take a general education course called Contemporary Urban Issues, where we discussed the problems that plague many inner city areas, things that a white girl from the suburbs like me had no idea were still happening. We had to write a final, 20-page paper based on an issue that related to our majors. As a Nursing major, health disparities was right up my ally. This is when I first started learning about HIV and AIDS.

I thought that this disease was a thing of the past that only affected gay men and women. Oh boy, was I wrong.

While it is true that gay and bisexual men remain the most affected population by this disease, it is important that we understand that 23% of new infections in 2015 were in heterosexual people. In fact, 5% of those new infections in 2015 were from people injecting drugs. With a major opioid and heroin epidemic happening in Ohio today, this information is pressing and relevant.

Not only that, but I didn't even know HIV and AIDS were two different things.

HIV, or human immunodeficiency virus, is the leading cause of AIDS, not AIDS itself. AIDS is the third stage of an HIV infection when the body no longer has enough T-cells to protect the body from infection. Opportunist infections begin taking advantage of the body, which usually ends in death.

I had no idea that while there isn't a cure for HIV or AIDS yet, that there is treatment to hold off the symptoms of the disease, known as ART or antiretroviral therapy. When ART is taken regularly and correctly, the life expectancy of someone suffering from this disease shoots up to that of almost a non-infected person.

Did you know that there is a medication that you can take called PrEP that can reduce your risk of contracting an HIV infection via sexual intercourse by 90% and via drug injection by 70%? And when this medication, which has no long term side effects according to the CDC, is used with condoms, the risk drops even lower. PrEP kicks in after seven days, if taken correctly every day, helping protect couples who wish to partake in anal sex.

Also, and this is really cool to me, there's basically a Plan-B of HIV infection.

This pill is called PEP, and it's helpful to even those who might have contracted an infection in a nontraditional way. It is important to note, however, that PEP should only be taken in emergency situations within 72 hours of possible infection. While PEP could be life saving, it can also be extremely dangerous to fetuses. PEP is when you start a high dosage round of the ART medication that we talked about earlier in order to prevent the HIV virus from attaching itself to the body.

And back in the old days, having HIV meant that you were definitely going to pass it on to your baby, but now, with proper treatment, there is less than a 1% chance of passing the HIV virus onto your baby. Isn't science awesome?!

All of this information is so easily accessible. Literally you can just hop on the internet and search "HIV" and you'll be met with thousands of credible sources that want you to have all of the information you can possibly absorb! This disease hasn't fallen off the face of the Earth, it's still here and it's still taking lives, so why aren't we educating our kids on it?

It's time to wake up, start talking about, and continue working towards a cure.

Act up, fight back, fight AIDS!