The United States of America's Global Assault on HIV/AIDS and LGBTQ Labor
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In January 2025, the second Trump administration enacted sweeping cuts to LGBTQ health and HIV/AIDS within the United States and globally. Drawing upon lessons he'd learned while writing his 2022 book The Viral Underclass, and supported by the Fund for Investigative Journalism and a Pulitzer Center Global Reporting Fellowship, public health scholar Steven W. Thrasher began tracking these cuts for Intercept. Drawing upon his field research in the United States, Greece, Palestine, Uganda and South Africa, Dr. Thrasher has found that the United States has not just been driving an increase in the conditions of HIV transmission around the world which will be felt for many years; he also discovered that the US has created an immediate crisis of LGBTQ employment which stretched from the Mississippi River Delta to the mouth of the Nile. This talk will present Dr. Thasher's research-in-progress, featuring interviews with public health navigators, people living with HIV and sex workers on three continents.
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