Black women make up 50% of new HIV diagnoses among women and are 10 times more likely to have an HIV diagnosis than their white counterparts.
Why? THIS ARTICLE FIRST APPEARED ON UNCLOSETED MEDIA A NEW INVESTIGATIVE LGBTQIA+ FOCUSSED NEWS PUBLICATION. WORDS SHARLA STEINMAN COVER PHOTO TANZU TOPUZOGLU COVER PHOTO DESIGN SAM DONNDELINGER Kennedi Lowman thought it was another routine blood donation day.
But in a single moment, her life was forever altered – shocked by an HIV-positive diagnosis she never saw coming. Lowman, a 38-year-old Black woman in Atlanta, Georgia, was a medical technologist at the time of her 2016 diagnosis, which came as a total shock. “I was just crying day and night, I was crying driving to work, I cried in the shower,” she says, adding that the diagnosis pushed her into a “deep, dark depression” for two years.
Once she pushed past her depression, Lowman – who believes she contracted HIV from her friends-with-benefits partner – turned her pain into purpose and became an advocate in Georgia’s HIV community.