May 19 is National Asian & Pacific Islander HIV/AIDS Awareness Day and World Hepatitis Day. This blog post is the final one of a series on the impact of HIV and Hepatitis B in Asian & Pacific Islander communities. As A&PIs, you may not believe that you are at risk for these diseases, but you are. We hope you followed our posts throughout the week for different perspectives and stories from our community.

First, Stephanie Goss and I (that would be David Stupplebeen) would like to thank Asian Pacific Americans for Progress and especially Curtis Chin for helping us coordinate this week of blog postings for May 19, National Asian & Pacific Islander HIV/AIDS Awareness Day and World Hepatitis Day. We certainly hope that everyone who took the time to read our postings this week learned a few things.

As I write this reflection, I did learn that much remains to be done about both HIV and Hepatitis B in our community. I've read many personal accounts about how our community still needs to be educated about these two diseases. Our community needs to do more to fight stigma and discrimination of people living with HIV and chronic Hepatitis B.

On Thursday, we were alerted to a story that broke on Salon.com about National Review Online's Jonah Goldberg who wrote a slight against our community and HIV awareness. While Salon did say something about HIV rates in the A&PI community, it was really attacking National Review Online. While it may be a case of 'any publicity is good publicity,' this is the first time in six years that any two national media outlets picked up anything about HIV in our community.

We could say that as a community have only ourselves to blame for the fact that the issue wasn't really covered. Because as a community we are so ashamed to talk openly about sexual health, and therefore what we need as a community to ensure our health, we become open to being slighted and our issues ultimately ignored. While it is already hard enough to get our community talk about these issues, the lack of broader coverage from mainstream media about these issues reinforce the model minority myth--not only within broader society--but within ourselves.

Meanwhile, the epidemic grows. In fact, during our press conference, some startling information came out about HIV rates. You may have heard of the concept of "cases per 100,000," the measure used by epidemiologist to compare disease within ethnic groups compared to their population numbers. This measure provides a way to do apples to apples comparisons of HIV rates when comparing different populations.

The number of cases of HIV among A&PIs using this measure is about to explode. Within 5 years, the number of HIV cases per 100,000 A&PIs will exceed that of Latinos. Within 10 years, the number of HIV cases per 100,000 A&PIs will exceed that of Blacks and African Americans. This means a larger proportion of A&PIs will be living with HIV.

We need to get tested for HIV. I know that the two-thirds of A&PIs who have never been tested for HIV didn't get tested on May 19. And I know that there's still someone out there living with HIV that doesn't know it. What we all need to do is remind our friends and family that we support them, good news or bad, and that you will be there before, maybe during, and definitely after they get tested for HIV.

We've given you the tools throughout the week. We've shared our stories, and we've shared the data. Now it's up to you to join the fight against HIV and stigma in our community. Without your help, the epidemic will keep growing.

With that in mind, I'd like to close this week of postings with a call to action: Find one of your friends that you've never talked to about HIV and actually talk to them about HIV. Then ask them to talk to one of their friends that they have never talked about HIV with to talk about HIV. Tell them the stats. Share these stories. Tell them that you'll be there. And most importantly, KEEP TALKING ABOUT HIV.