2021 will mark the first anniversary of COVID-19 in the United States and the 40th anniversary of HIV/AIDS. Yet both pandemics continue to affect our well-being and health. How might history help us move beyond oversimplified comparisons between the two, while showing us that health is always more than the absence of disease? In this talk, Jennifer Brier (History, University of Illinois at Chicago) shared work from I’m Still Surviving: A Living Women’s History of HIV/AIDS and 27 Questions for Writers & Journalists to Consider when Writing about COVID-19 & HIV/AIDS (http://hivdoula.work/27-questions).

Over the 2020–21 academic year, HRI's Out of Isolation Series examined the intersection of COVID-19 with research on race and ethnicity, class and gender, labor and poverty, access and public education, climate change and other “preconditions."