How This Black Gay Millennial Helped Bring U=U to the White House
2022 was a big year for Deondre Moore. While the community engagement expert and public speaker has been dedicated to helping improve the lives of people living with HIV for nearly a decade now, this year Moore — in addition to being honored by LGBTQ+ organization GLAAD — was able to bring his message all the way to the White House.As a partnerships and community engagement manager for the Prevention Access Campaign (PAC), Moore was instrumental in getting the Biden administration to officially endorse the U=U movement.
PAC was originally founded in 2016 by activist Bruce Richman with a goal of creating awareness around U=U, or “undetectable equals untransmittable.” U=U is a scientifically proven fact which states that an HIV-positive person who is on treatment and has an undetectable viral load has zero chance of transmitting the virus to a sexual partner, even without the use of a condom.
This fact has been incredibly freeing and stigma-reducing for people living with HIV and speaks to the importance of drug adherence — so Moore and PAC’s goal is to spread the word.Deondre Moore speaks onstage while accepting his GLAAD Award in May in New YorkIn addition to our federal government, U=U is now also endorsed by over 1,000 organizations in 105 countries, including the U.S.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the World Health Organization (WHO).Moore says if he had to describe this past year and the work he’s done in three words, they would be: “policy, partnerships, people.”He explains how public comments he made (along with several other HIV activists' comments) at the President’s Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS (PACHA) meeting this past March would set the wheels into motion of bringing the message of U=U.
