If you’ve ever sat through a normal high school health class, you probably know how it goes: an old slideshow, maybe some random video, a lot of scare tactics, and then everyone gets awkward and quiet when HIV comes up.
The problem is that some health classes are still teaching HIV like we’re living decades ago. While lessons can focus heavily on fear and abstinence, medicine has changed a lot over the past thirty years. HIV is still serious, but the treatments and prevention options we have today are nothing like they were in the 1980s.
HIV, or Human Immunodeficiency Virus, is a virus that attacks the body’s immune system, especially CD4 cells, which help the body fight infections. Someone can have HIV for years without having AIDS. AIDS, or Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome, is the most advanced stage of HIV, when the immune system has been seriously damaged. Without treatment, HIV can eventually lead to AIDS. But modern HIV treatment can stop the virus from multiplying and help people keep their immune systems strong.
Modern medicine has changed HIV prevention too.
According to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), young people ages 13 to 24 continue to make up about one-fifth of new HIV diagnoses in the U.S.
I’ve heard students say that health class often misses the mark when it comes to modern medical progress.
In 2012, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved Truvada for PrEP, a medication that people who are HIV-negative can take to help prevent HIV. When taken as prescribed, PrEP reduces the risk of getting HIV from sex by about 99%, according to data from Planned Parenthood and the CDC.
Treatment for people living with HIV has also become much easier than it used to be. Many people can now control HIV with a single pill taken once a day. There are also long-acting injectable treatments that don’t require taking a pill every day.
To understand how big that change really is, look back at the 1980s. HIV and AIDS were terrifying diagnoses, and there were very few treatment options.
AZT, the first drug approved by the FDA to treat HIV, was approved in 1987. It helped people, but it also had serious side effects, and using it alone didn’t work forever. As doctors learned more about the virus, they found that combining different medications was more effective. By the mid-to-late 1990s, combination therapy had completely changed HIV treatment, as detailed in historical reviews by the National Institutes of Health (NIH)
People living with HIV back then were also dealing with a huge amount of fear and stigma. HIV was often treated like a death sentence, and many people were afraid to even talk about it. Families, friends, and communities sometimes treated people differently simply because they had HIV. The medical progress was important, but so was changing the way people thought about the disease.
One of the biggest breakthroughs is something called “undetectable equals untransmittable,” or “U=U.” When someone with HIV takes effective treatment and keeps their viral load undetectable, they cannot transmit HIV through sex.
Medical consensus published in The Lancet and supported by global health organizations confirms that someone living with HIV who is on effective treatment can have relationships, make plans, go to school, work, and live their life without passing HIV to a sexual partner.
But even with all of this medical progress, the stigma hasn’t disappeared. But with more information about the medication’s progress, perhaps that could change.
Editor’s Note: This article was supported by the 2026 CNP Media Fund.
