National Transgender HIV Testing Day Date in the current year: April 18, 2024

Transgender individuals, particularly transgender women, are one of the groups that are disproportionately affected by HIV. Transgender people made up 2% of new HIV diagnoses in the United States and dependencies in 2019. However, the actual number of transgender people living with HIV is probably higher due to the combination of transphobic discrimination and HIV stigma, which may prevent transgender people from learning their HIV status. This is especially true for young transgender women of color.

Young transgender and other gender minority individuals are more likely to miss HIV care appointments and interrupt their HIV treatment due to difficulty accessing healthcare services, being treated negatively by healthcare workers who expressed a lack of understanding for their gender identity, and unmet need for gender affirmation, including unmet surgical needs and not being on hormones.

According to a 2020 survey conducted by the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), transgender people with diagnosed HIV are more likely to miss medical appointments and less likely to take HIV medicine consistently, which prevents them from achieving and maintaining viral suppression (having less than 200 copies of virus per milliliter of blood).

National Transgender HIV Testing Day (NTHTD) has been observed every April 18 since 2016. It was established by the University of California, San Francisco Transgender Center of Excellence in collaboration with the CDC. Like other HIV awareness days in the US, it is supported by HIV.gov (formerly named AIDS.gov), a federal portal designed to provide access to domestic HIV and AIDS resources.

The main goal of NTHTD is to raise awareness of the importance of HIV testing and access to prevention and treatment services for transgender, non-binary and gender-nonconforming individuals. How can you participate in NTHTD? If you know a transgender individual who hasn’t been tested for HIV for over a year, encourage them to finally learn their HIV status. You can get them a free HIV self-testing kit as a gift if they are reluctant to make an HIV test appointment because of a previous negative experience with the healthcare system.

You also can donate to organizations that support HIV-positive transgender individuals and share HIV testing, prevention and treatment resources for transgender and non-binary people on social media with the hashtags #NTHTD, #TransHIV and #StopHIVTogether to raise awareness and help combat the stigma surrounding HIV and non-cis gender identities.

National Transgender HIV Testing Day should not be confused with National HIV Testing Day. The latter is observed on June 27; it is designed to encourage everyone between the ages of 13 and 64 to get tested for HIV at least once a year.