David Gold is co-founder and CEO of Global Health Strategies, a global health communications and advocacy consulting firm. He is an attorney by training, but started his career in advocacy working as an AIDS treatment activist with ACT UP and as medical information director at Gay Men’s Health Crisis. Prior to co-founding GHS in 2002, he co-founded AVAC and served as vice president for policy and public support at IAVI.

Mandeep Dhaliwal is the director of UNDP’s HIV, Health and Development Group, Bureau of Policy and Program Support. Ms. Dhaliwal brings to the organization over 25 years of experience working on HIV, health, human rights, and evidence-based policy and programming in low- and middle-income countries. Ms. Dhaliwal joined UNDP in 2008 and was the architect of the Global Commission on HIV and the Law.

In many ways, COVID-19 is the newest iteration of a decades-long struggle for equality and justice: too often, the most vulnerable are stigmatized, denied access to care, and left out of key decisions that directly impact their health.

Today, marginalized groups are disproportionately affected by both the health risks as well as the economic and social fallout of COVID-19. LGBTIQ+ populations have been subject to further blame and abuse due to the pandemic and are being left out of COVID-19 response and recovery initiatives. People who are incarcerated report being denied care as the coronavirus tears through prisons around the world. Lockdowns and social distancing requirements have left many sex workers without income, and those that continue to work face heightened health risks.

The parallels to the HIV/AIDS epidemic are clear, at the height of which those most affected were many of the same marginalized groups that are most vulnerable to COVID-19 now. Widespread stigma and discrimination prevented many from seeking care, and many health workers refused to treat these communities for fear of contracting the virus. Yet, affected communities were often excluded from discussions about HIV research, funding, and policy agendas. That is, until AIDS activists took matters into their own hands. Read more via Devex