This Irish AIDS Day, June 15, ACT UP Dublin and masc.life will unveil a new media campaign highlighting the health and prevention benefits of HIV treatment. ACT UP member Andrew Leavitt talks about taking the solution into your own hands.

Entitled, ‘We Are The Solution’, the latest campaign from ACT UP Dublin, in association with the online interview magazine, masc.life, features portraits of men living with HIV in Ireland sharing the message that effective HIV treatment keeps people with HIV healthy and prevents the virus from being passed on during sex. This new initiative builds on previous contributions to the international U=U (undetectable equals untransmittable) campaign from people in Ireland.

Last year, we at ACT UP Dublin joined with Stephen Moloney from masc.life to create ‘Come Out Fighting’, a free ’zine that looked at current views on sex and sexuality amongst gay and bisexual men, including PrEP and U=U.

ACT UP also created posters, cards and other educational and promotional materials about U=U, along with a short video called ‘Love & Suppression’, featuring a Dublin-based couple who actually took part in the PARTNER study – one of the major studies confirming the science behind U=U.

This year we wanted to create something new and a little bit different. We wanted to feature real people, showing their faces, using their real names, and speaking in their own words. Stephen had already done interviews for masc.life with a number of guys where they talked about living with HIV, and when we proposed using that as a basis for a more public campaign, he agreed without hesitation.

The campaign’s name, ‘We Are The Solution’ is a challenge to the perception that people living with HIV are a public health threat or a problem to be managed. The fact is that one of the best ways we have to end new HIV transmissions is to help people living with HIV to know their status and get access to proper care and treatment.

We’re not the first to use the phrase this way. A quote from Rich Wolitski, from the US Department of Health and Human Services, captures the message perfectly: “We are not dirty, we are not a threat, and we are not disease vectors. In fact, we are the solution. People living with HIV who achieve viral suppression, who become undetectable, are the solution to the end of new HIV infections.”

Public health campaigns about HIV are often solemn and heavy, but we wanted this one to be affirming and uplifting. We wanted to show people living with HIV who were smiling, vibrant and happy to share this information, because we should be happy about it. It’s really good news.

We wanted to keep things relatable and natural, and avoid overly technical terms as much as possible. And we wanted to remove some of the mystery around what being ‘undetectable’ means by talking about how you get and stay undetectable: starting treatment and sticking with it.

The message here isn’t about tests and numbers, it’s about feeling confident that HIV is something you can handle. Something that you can do – taking your meds every day – is what keeps your HIV under control.

This particular campaign is focused just on gay and bisexual men. We were fortunate that Stephen had already done interviews with the participants where they talked about living with HIV. So we already had an incredible resource that we could build on easily, and everyone we asked eagerly agreed to participate.

But we hope to see more inclusive and representative campaigns in the future. U=U is a message that needs to be heard throughout the country, not just in the LGBT+ community.

The U=U message is one that can be difficult for people to accept. We’ve been taught to be so afraid of HIV for so long that it’s not easy to trust the science.

But the science is clear: when HIV medication is working, there’s no risk of passing on HIV. So it’s important to repeat the message in different ways, using different kinds of language, to help people really get used to the idea. Letting people living with HIV show what living with HIV is actually like and what U=U means to them, is a powerful challenge to outdated ideas and the stigma that they enable.

Find our more about ACT UP at actupdublin.com