HIV stigma is holding us back from ending the HIV epidemic. If we’re to redress the fearvertizing, politicization and alienation that have characterized the last four decades of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, we need to get radical.

Update HIV is a campaign to end stigma by calling for HIV to be renamed. The global campaign innovatively applies marketing strategy to a health crisis.

Launched on World AIDS Day, 2022, with a call to “Change the name. End the stigma”, the campaign demonstrates how false associations with the term “HIV” hinder access to treatment and the effectiveness of prevention programs. “Update HIV” is a call to update our perceptions of HIV and adopt a more wholistic global strategy to ending the HIV epidemic.

Within months of its launch, the campaign won vocal public endorsement from numerous key figures in the field of HIV research and activism, reaching millions of people via open letters, donated out-of-home media, influencer partnerships, and on-the-ground activations.