HIV/AIDS Awareness

The Health Promotion office of OU along with Open Doors of OU brought a fantastic speaker to our campus last night. Tyler J. Helms is an incredibly successful man living with HIV. Tyler spoke about the trials of living with HIV, the difficulties of coming out publicly with the virus and how he wants to bring more awareness to this terrible virus. We had a fantastic turn out--and a great response from the audience.

I am extremely excited to be a part of the Health Promotion office next year for my graduate assistantship and am thrilled that this event got as much attention as it did. I have to be honest, I don't feel like we hear much about AIDS any more. I remember talking about it a lot in elementary and middle school, but since then I feel like a lot less concern is put on the topic. I'm thinking it may be because of better medicines that provide fairly positive news for those suffering. But this virus is still spreading and therefore still needs attention and people talking about it. Communication still needs to be happening reminding people to have safe sex, reminding people that HIV/AIDS does not discriminate and reminding people that it can happen to them. Check out Tyler's video:

Some of the pictures Matt and I took of the event:

Education was offered about how to properly put on and remove a condom

Tyler J. Helms