Yuba College Library Hosts NLM Exhibit: AIDS, Posters, and Stories of Public Health: A People’s History of a Pandemic
By Morgan Brynnan, Yuba College
This exhibition explores how AIDS posters serve as highly adaptable, durable, cost effective, efficient tools in sharing public health messaging. Created by communities bonded together by illness and a desire to make change, these posters provide a gateway to AIDS history, illustrating how, in the face of illness, neglect, and, early on, the unknown, people came together to connect, create, and save one another's lives. Today, AIDS posters continue to be valuable resources for the ongoing epidemic. They teach us about community organizing processes and the ways that groups dealing with HIV heal, share fears, and strategize toward wellness together.
AIDS, Posters, and Stories of Public Health: A People's History of a Pandemic includes selected AIDS posters from Surviving and Thriving: AIDS, Politics, and Culture, the 2013 exhibition about the history of HIV/AIDS in the United States.
These are displayed on large, printed banners in the Library and Learning Center lobby (Building 1100). There is a concurrent digital exhibit available on the National Library of Medicine's website.
We hope you will visit, view and think about this exhibit which is still relevant today. According to HIV.gov, among individuals ages 13 and older:
Approximately 1.2 million people in the U.S.A have HIV. About 13 percent of them don’t know it and need testing.
- HIV continues to have a disproportionate impact on certain populations, particularly racial and ethnic minorities and gay, bisexual, and other men who have sex with men (MSM).
- In 2021, an estimated 32,100 new HIV infections occurred in the U.S.
- Estimated new HIV infections declined 12% from 36,500 in 2017 to 32,100 in 2021.
- In 2021, 36,136 individuals received an HIV diagnosis in the U.S. and 6 dependent areas at 3,500 new infections per day.
The National Library of Medicine produced this exhibition and companion website.