Equality Arlington Applauds Arlington County’s Inclusion of Marketing Funding for Public Health to Address LGBTQ+ Sexual Health Needs in 2025 Budget

Equality Arlington, an LGBTQ+ advocacy nonprofit, applauds the Arlington County Board for adding marketing funding for Public Health programs, including the Sexually Transmitted Infection (STI) Clinic and AIDS Drug Assistance Program (ADAP), as we advocated for in our March 21st letter. The $25,000 funding allocation creates a new marketing budget for the Public Health Division. As HIV infection rates in Arlington have increased by 58% since 2022, mostly among young adults, this is an important step for the county to increase awareness of existing resources to promote positive sexual health.

There is a significant lack of awareness within Arlington’s LGBTQ+ community that the county’s Public Health Division offers STI testing and HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment services. “Equality Arlington has been surveying LGBTQ+ residents for over a year about pressing needs in the community and unmet sexual health needs consistently rises to the top,” says Kellen MacBeth, President of Equality Arlington. “Not a single queer person we spoke with was aware that the county offered STI testing and HIV/AIDS services and when we met with the county’s Public Health Division, we learned why: they have had zero dollars in their budget for marketing.”

Equality Arlington urges the county to continue taking action to address the unmet sexual health needs of LGBTQ+ residents by subsidizing the cost of the STI Clinic’s testing for county residents so that it is available at no cost to the patient. The existing sliding scale payment system for clinic patients, in place since 2017, replaced the prior system of free testing. The STI Clinic has seen a decrease in patients participating in their testing program since that time which has negatively impacted the sexual health of Arlington residents.

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