It’s June! Which means Pride month! For many of us Pride 2022 means getting back out and celebrating our individuality for the first time since 2019.

As always, Pride lets us meet new people, have fun and celebrate equality, diversity and the LGBTQ+ community. We also take the chance to remember the origins of Pride and recognise it as a chance to raise awareness of key issues confronting LGBTQ+ people worldwide at the moment. And we remember the challenges that we have faced as a community, particularly the HIV epidemic.

Pride allows us to celebrate sexuality and freedom of sexual expression, it is about overcoming boundaries and supporting openness. This makes Pride a great place to celebrate the importance of talking about good sexual health across the community.

Here’s just a few things you can do to celebrate sexual health during pride:

• Visit your sexual health clinic and get tested
• Make sure you’re prepared with plenty of lube and condoms etc.
• Find out more about HIV and other sexual health issues from reliable and accessible sources like Prepster: https://prepster.info/
• If you are HIV-negative, talk to your sexual health clinic about PrEP for HIV prevention, and download the Preptrack app to help you manage your protection
• Help to break down barriers by talking to your partner or a close friend about sexual health and the easy ways that they can help to protect themselves and others

Taking these steps can help us all to enjoy celebrating Pride this summer and by protecting your sexual health and supporting others to do the same you will be helping to end the HIV pandemic sooner and stop the spread of other illnesses.

Happy pride!