Heroes in the Struggle: Dázon Dixon Diallo
Dázon Dixon Diallo, Founder and CEO, SisterLove, Inc
The Black AIDS Institute's Heroes in the Struggle Gala and Award Celebration honors, in a star-studded event and photographic tribute, individuals who, over the past year, have made a heroic contribution to the fight against HIV/AIDS. Below, one in a series profiling the 2016 honorees.
While advocating for women's sexual and reproductive rights in Atlanta in the 1980s, Dázon Dixon Diallo noticed the lack of HIV/AIDS resources for Black women. There was hardly any information about prevention and practically no support for women who were diagnosed with the disease. Knowing how important the need for services and assistance was, Diallo was determined to solve these issues and make resources available.
In 1989, at age 24, Diallo started SisterLove, Inc., an Atlanta-based HIV/AIDS and reproductive-justice nonprofit that focuses on women (particularly of African descent) and provides services in areas of education, prevention, advocacy, leadership development and community-based participatory research, an approach that equitably involves and values all partners. It has since become her life's work.
"I recognized early on that HIV was actually more of a sexual, reproductive-health and justice issue in so many more ways than it was a public health and epidemic issue," Diallo says. "That's why, in addition to creating direct services like the testing, counseling, linkage to care and prevention education, we had to focus on advocacy and activism to make sure that women's issues were included and amplified."
Over the last 27 years, SisterLove, the first women's HIV/AIDS and restorative-justice organization in the southeastern U.S., has grown and Diallo has become a renowned HIV visionary and fierce activist. The organization also has an office in Mpumalanga, a rural South African province. It was just as important for Diallo to provide services to that region, which has been ravaged by HIV/AIDS (according to UNAIDS, 4 million women are living with HIV in South Africa), as it was to have resources available for women in the U.S.
Women Then, Women Now
Last July, Diallo organized Women Now! 2016, a conference in South Africa that assembled a diverse group of leaders to assess the content and execution of the 2016 International AIDS Conference. The summit addressed ideas, interests, concerns and solutions pertaining to HIV's intersection with sexual and reproductive justice and the lives of Black women. It was the first meeting of its kind to focus specifically upon women of African descent, from across the African continent and diaspora, as well as the first to discuss ways to build community with science, researchers and policymakers.
"It was important to come together on our own terms to ask why African women or women of African descent are the disproportionate bearers of the HIV/AIDS epidemic worldwide and what that means and what we're doing about it," she says. Diallo plans to hold the preconference before other important upcoming events, such as Women Deliver, the Association for Women's Rights in Development or United Nations meetings.
Running SisterLove is not Diallo's only work in HIV/AIDS and women's rights. She is an adjunct professor in women's health at Morehouse School of Medicine's Masters of Public Health Program and currently chairs the Metro Atlanta HIV/AIDS Services Planning Council. She is also a member of the AIDS Research Advisory Council of the Division of AIDS at the National Institutes of Health, a founding member of the 30 for 30 Campaign for Women in the National HIV/AIDS Strategy and sits on the HIV/DV National Advisory Committee for the National Network to End Domestic Violence. Diallo also developed and implemented Healthy Love, a prevention intervention that is now a part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Compendium of Effective Evidence-based HIV Prevention Interventions.
For three decades Diallo has successfully and passionately given the voiceless a voice, the disadvantaged an advantage and hope to the forgotten. She intends to continue her fight for women's rights and against HIV/AIDs for the rest of her life. "I didn't have an expectation, dream or goal to do this work and be in this position in my life," she admits. "But it was definitely obvious to me early on that it was meant to be my path. The universe puts you on the path, and when you can recognize that path and stay on it, then you go where it takes you. I have no excuses not to stay in this struggle."
The Heroes in the Struggle Gala and Award Celebration will take place Dec. 1, 2016, at the Director's Guild of America in Los Angeles. To purchase tickets, go here, email
LaShieka Hunter is a freelance writer and editor based on Long Island, N.Y.