NATIONAL HIV TESTING DAY is observed each year on June 27 to highlight the importance of HIV testing.
The NHTD theme for 2024 is “Level up your self-love: check your status.” This theme emphasizes valuing yourself, showing compassion and respect, and honoring your health needs with self-love. Knowing your HIV status helps you choose options to stay healthy.
HIV testing, including self-testing, is the pathway to engaging people in care to keep them healthy, regardless of their test result. People who receive a negative test result can take advantage of HIV prevention tools such as pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) and condoms. People who receive a positive test result can rapidly start HIV treatment (antiretroviral therapy, or ART) to stay healthy. Knowing your test result is an opportunity to obtain other sexual health services such as vaccines and testing for sexually transmitted infections.
The National HIV/AIDS Strategy and the Ending the HIV Epidemic in the U.S. Initiative continue to guide efforts to help us reach all people who can benefit from HIV prevention and care. The path to life-saving treatment starts with testing. HIV self-testing like Together TakeMeHome (TTMH) helps provide free testing to people who do not have easy access to in-person testing services and can reduce stigma for those who may be reluctant to go for an in-person HIV test.
As part of NHTD, please use the hashtag #HIVTestingDay on your social media channels and communicate to your audiences that there are many options for getting tested for HIV. HIV testing is a critical tool to help us end the HIV epidemic in the United States. We appreciate everything you contribute to help us achieve this goal.
