Sharing the Love: PrEP4Teens NMAC Workshop 2025

Part of creating a community-informed project like PrEP4Teens is consistent change. It’s super important for us to continue to get feedback. Usually, that means we seek feedback from young folks, but sometimes that means we attend research conferences, especially for HIV prevention, and share our ideas and methods so we can get some feedback on them while we learn from everyone else’s techniques in the field.

This year, Skai, Al, DeMario, Jim, Nala, and Bryant all traveled to Atlanta, Georgia to participate in the 2025 NMAC Biomedical HIV Prevention conference for two big reasons: one, we wanted to host a workshop and show off all of the fun stuff we’ve done to make PrEP4Teens happen including Skai and Al’s vogue teaching skills and Bryant and friend from TaskForce Sabrina’s PowerPoint making skill, but we also went because we submitted a nomination for the 2025 PrEPPY Awards.

The PrEPPY Awards celebrate campaigns that are dedicated to HIV prevention and have a remarkable online presence. We thought we were a perfect fit. And, as it turns out, we were! We were accepted as one of the top three campaigns. We unfortunately got third place out of three, but it was hard to feel all that bummed about it because our competition, Black Girls PrEP Too, and Preparate, are two incredible, incredible campaigns.

During the conference, we met so many lovely people and were able to hand out tons of swag—plus, we made some connections that we hope can pay off in the future! At our workshop, as we taught folks about the history of PrEP4Teens and how we built everything, we encouraged them to consider how something like PrEP4Teens may work in their own community.

For us, vogue, dance, and visual art all work wonders with our community—but for others, there may not be as big of a ballroom scene for them to tap into. They may not have as many places to put murals or may not have as many people interested in visual arts. Instead, something like developing music or putting on a performance.

There’s so much that can be done with a program like PrEP4Teens—what would something like PrEP4Teens look like in your community?

If you have any ideas that you’d like to share, send us an email prep4teenschicago@gmail.com! And be sure to check out our new gallery here to see some of the pics we took!