Tez Anderson

07/24/2025

Ribbon- A Center of Excellence, invites you to join us for “What Does HIV Activism Look Like as We Age: Exploring the Future of Intergenerational Activism”, a virtual town-hall hosted by our Program Action Group.

This interactive event will highlight the lived experiences of long-term survivors and foster cross-generational dialogue on sustaining activism in the HIV movement. Please view the flyer for event and registration details below.

📅 Wednesday, July 30, 2025
🕓 4:00 PM – 5:30 PM ET
📍 Virtual: http://bit.ly/4nX84Ro | Registration Required

We look forward to your participation in this vital conversation.

Join us for an interactive discussion with a panel of seasoned leaders and long-term survivors, bringing insights and inspiring cross-gen collaboration to fuel the movement forward.

07/24/2025

Ribbon- A Center of Excellence, invites you to join us for “What Does HIV Activism Look Like as We Age: Exploring the Future of Intergenerational Activism”, a virtual town-hall hosted by our Program Action Group.

This interactive event will highlight the lived experiences of long-term survivors and foster cross-generational dialogue on sustaining activism in the HIV movement. Please view the flyer for event and registration details below.

📅 Wednesday, July 30, 2025
🕓 4:00 PM – 5:30 PM ET
📍 Virtual: http://bit.ly/4nX84Ro | Registration Required

Join us for an interactive discussion with a panel of seasoned leaders and long-term survivors, bringing insights and inspiring cross-gen collaboration to fuel the movement forward.

07/18/2025

I just discovered that trailblazing AIDS activist (and hero of mine) Michael Callen and I share a birthday, April 11. He was born in 1955, and I was in 1959.

He originated the concept of survivorship in his groundbreaking book Surviving AIDS (1990). We only met once, but he was inspirational and gifted with a beautiful singing voice. He was an activist to the core. He died in 1994 and was prophetic in his prediction that we would not all die young from AIDS.

08/24/2021

Newly Passed California Law Recognizes the Needs of Older People Living With HIV

This past July marked the 40-year anniversary of The New York Times story noting a rare cancer found in several dozen “homos*xuals.” That cancer, of course, was Kaposi’s sarcoma, and the cause was a wiped-out immune system, caused by the yet-to-be identified and named virus HIV. While the next several years would reveal much about the virus and treatment approaches, only the most optimistic at the time believed that people with HIV would live for several more decades and beyond.

——

Although Tez Anderson, founder of Let’s Kick ASS (AIDS Survivor Syndrome) is hardly socially isolated, he acknowledged that as a long-term survivor—of more than three decades—he’s aging at a faster rate due to his body fighting off the virus since 1983. “I’m 63, and experiencing symptoms of an older person,” said Anderson. “My energy level is drained without warning, partly due to the early medications I took back in the day. I have neuropathy in my hands and feet, which makes walking long distances painful. But fortunately, I have no bone density issues.”

In part because of ageism, Anderson said, older people often don’t receive adequate attention from society at large. “Older adults with HIV and AIDS are a majority of all people living with HIV in the U.S., but people think of HIV as a young person’s problem,” said Anderson. “Rather than being seen as an asset, we are seen as a burden.”

Anderson has used his lived experience as a long-term survivor with HIV to advocate for the passage and implementation of the new law and help California lawmakers and policymakers understand what’s at stake for older PLWH. He said he’ll continue to do what he can to ensure that the state Department of Aging puts older PLWH at the table.

The HIV & Aging Act affirms that older adults with HIV are a population in “greatest social need” and more likely to need community-based services.

09/04/2019

09/01/2019

BIG NEWS ABOUT UNDETECTABLE = UNTRANSMITTABLE

Dear Health Department and CBO Grantees,

I am writing to encourage you to continue your work to spread the word about the power of viral suppression to improve the health of people with HIV and to prevent the s*xual transmission of HIV. This information is important and has the power to change lives.
In July, we updated our webpage titled “Effectiveness of Prevention Strategies to Reduce the Risk of Acquiring or Transmitting HIV” that features tables summarizing the latest evidence of effectiveness for the key HIV prevention strategies ART, PrEP, and condoms. For ART, the science is strong and clear; the data show that the effectiveness for ART with viral suppression is estimated to be 100% for preventing s*xual transmission of HIV. In other words, for persons taking ART as prescribed and achieving and maintaining viral suppression, there is effectively no risk of transmitting HIV through s*x.
CDC has taken a number of steps to share this information. We have sent various communications to our partners, developed technical and consumer fact sheets, and received funding from HHS to further accelerate the dissemination of this information through the development of new campaign resources for health care providers and consumers through our Let’s Stop HIV Together (formerly Act Against AIDS) campaigns. We are pleased that these resources are available on our Treatment as Prevention website, and we will continue to post more as they become available.
We urge you to share this groundbreaking science with your communities. Research shows that no single message is acceptable or understandable to all audiences, so it is important to have flexibility and options when communicating about this life-saving science. You can use CDC-developed materials, as well as materials developed by community groups such as Prevention Action Campaign, the organization responsible for the U=U campaign (undetectable=untransmittable).
The bottom line – there are a lot of resources available through CDC and elsewhere. We encourage you to do all you can to share this important information in your communities. If you have specific questions related to this issue or how to best integrate CDC materials into your program, please contact your CDC project officer who can help you or link you to Division resources who are happy to assist.
Thank you,

Eugene McCray, M.D.
Director, Division of HIV/AIDS Prevention
National Center for HIV/AIDS, Viral Hepatitis, STD & TB Prevention Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
1600 Clifton Road, NE (Mailstop US8-5)
Atlanta, GA 30329-4027

12/01/2017

An article I wrote for Time magazine for check it out!

"I spent decades planning to die."