What to know
- ‘Just Say It!’ is a new national campaign using social media to spark open, candid conversations about HIV and reduce stigma.
- The campaign pairs people living with HIV and advocates with mainstream influencers to discuss sex, dating, testing, disclosure, relationships and misconceptions.
- Canada saw an estimated 2,517 new HIV infections in 2024, a 22.8 per cent increase from 2022.
- Public understanding hasn’t kept pace with HIV science, with 80 per cent of Canadians surveyed saying they had never heard of U=U, or “undetectable equals untransmittable.”
- Organizers say facts alone aren’t enough to end stigma, which can also be shaped by fear, stereotypes, discomfort and moral judgments.
- Early campaign videos have generated millions of engagements, suggesting there is an appetite for more honest conversations about HIV.
They say communication is key, and that’s the concept behind a new campaign aimed at reducing stigma associated with HIV in Canada.
“Just Say It!” is a new national campaign calling on Canadians to have open discussions about HIV/AIDS, challenge common misconceptions, and get educated on the contemporary scientific advances that have transformed what it means to live with the virus.
The campaign is in support of The Positive Effect, a national HIV stigma-reduction initiative from REACH Nexus at St. Michael’s Hospital’s MAP Centre for Urban Health Solutions. Just Say It is utilizing a popular tool to elevate conversations about the virus nationwide: social media.
Just Say It! HIV awareness campaign
The premise is deliberately simple: people living with HIV and HIV advocates are paired with mainstream influencers and given the space to have candid, unscripted conversations about HIV, sex, relationships, testing, disclosure, dating and stigma.
Rather than presenting viewers with another traditional educational video telling them what they should think, the campaign intends to allow audiences to tap into an honest, informed conversation about HIV.
James Watson is the campaign’s lead and manager of stigma initiatives and peer training at REACH Nexus. He tells Queer & Now that if we as a society want attitudes about HIV to change, we have to get people talking about it again.
Watson said the HIV sector has historically spent a lot of time speaking to people who are already engaged with HIV organizations and information, but Just Say It! is designed to reach the people outside that bubble, especially people who are not necessarily going to seek out HIV information for themselves.
“We wanted to find a way to take those conversations outside of that bubble and reach people who might never follow an HIV organization [on social media] or seek out HIV information for themselves at all,” Watson explained in an interview.
The campaign already features several social media videos with popular creators like Jordan Shore and Myles Sexton, with each clip garnering hundreds of thousands of views. Each conversation sees the HIV advocate and a mainstream influencer ask questions, be curious and, occasionally, get things wrong. That last part is intentional.
Watson explained that the conversations are unscripted because the campaign is designed to avoid presenting HIV education as a lecture. Instead, the videos create a space where people can ask the questions they might otherwise be afraid to say out loud.
This is both critical and timely, as HIV cases in Canada are on the rise.
HIV in Canada: 95-95-95
Numbers show that sexually transmitted and blood-borne infections like HIV continue to be a significant public health concern in Canada despite being both largely preventable and treatable.
Despite this, Canada has committed to meeting global targets set by the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) and the World Health Organization (WHO) towards the elimination of HIV/AIDS as a public health threat by 2030.
These targets call for 95 per cent of people living with HIV to be diagnosed, 95 per cent of those diagnosed to be on treatment, and 95 per cent of those receiving treatment to have a suppressed viral load, AKA be undetectable. When these three targets are achieved, at least 86 per cent of all people living with HIV in Canada will be virally suppressed, limiting both severe health consequences and transmission.
Data shows that in 2024 an estimated 70,900 people in Canada were living with HIV. Of that 70,900, 91 per cent were diagnosed, 86 per cent of those diagnosed were on treatment, while 96 per cent of people receiving treatment had a suppressed viral load.
That same year saw approximately 2,517 new HIV infections, representing a 22.8 per cent increase from 2022. This works out to about seven new infections nationwide each day.
Science has changed. The stigma hasn’t disappeared.
As numbers increase, as do the importance of advocates raising awareness and combatting stigma around HIV. One of the biggest challenges facing HIV advocates is that public understanding hasn’t necessarily kept pace with the science. For instance, the concept of “U=U,” short for “undetectable equals untransmittable.”
This refers to the fact that people living with HIV who receive effective treatment are usually able to maintain an undetectable viral load. These people are unable to transmit HIV sexually.
Watson described U=U as one of the biggest scientific advances in HIV, but said a national study conducted with the Canadian Positive Peoples Network and Ipsos found that 80 per cent of people surveyed in the general population had never heard of U=U. That knowledge gap is one reason the campaign was created.
“Our messages, the old misconceptions about HIV, are not getting through to the general public,” Watson says.
But this isn’t the only misconception shaping how people think about HIV. Watson gives another example: The belief that HIV is still a death sentence.
It isn’t. Watson has been living with HIV for 27 years. He explained that, like himself, most Canadians living with HIV can lead long, healthy and thriving lives with effective treatment.
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He shared that misconceptions about how HIV is transmitted persist. HIV is not spread through everyday contact such as hugging, sharing food, kissing or using the same bathroom, Watson said.
Another misconception is that HIV primarily affects Gay men.
While Gay, Bisexual and other men who have sex with men continue to be disproportionately affected by HIV in Canada, Watson said the virus affects many different communities, and heterosexual people now account for a significant proportion of new diagnoses. But simply giving people facts may not be enough to eliminate stigma.
“I think it’s also a misconception that if we just give people the facts, the right facts, that stigma is going to disappear,” Watson said. “It just doesn’t work that way.”
People can understand the science while still carrying fear, discomfort, stereotypes and moral judgments about HIV.
That, Watson said, is where conversation becomes important.
“We are not these vectors of disease anymore”
After nearly three decades of living with HIV, Watson says that he has seen stigma decrease, but it hasn’t disappeared. Some of it is obvious, but other forms are much more subtle, including biases that persist within social and medical systems. He pointed to language and attitudes that continue to divide people into categories, calling those without HIV or other sexually transmitted infections “dirty,” while those without are considered “clean.”
“We are not these vectors of disease anymore,” Watson said. “Given the right treatment, we cannot transmit the virus.”
He said that many misconceptions and misunderstandings exist regarding the growing body of knowledge around HIV prevention, including PrEP, which can prevent people from acquiring HIV when taken as prescribed. For Watson, getting information about those scientific advances into mainstream conversations is essential.
The goal of Just Say It! isn’t simply to tell people the facts. It’s to make HIV something people feel comfortable talking about again, and early engagement with the campaign suggests audiences are willing to have that conversation.
The campaign videos have garnered collective engagement of over two million likes, as well as thousands of likes and hundreds of comments. Those comments are particularly important to the campaign because organizers hope to analyze them to understand whether the conversations are influencing attitudes and behaviour.
Some of the responses have been exactly what the campaign is hoping to inspire. People are commenting that they never knew certain facts about HIV and encouraging the conversation to continue. For Watson, that is the point.
The campaign brings together people who might otherwise never have a reason to sit down and talk about HIV, then invites viewers to listen. Because ending HIV stigma may require more than knowing the science, it may require being willing to “just say it.”
