HIV in Florida
The Sunshine State's Hidden Epidemic

By the Numbers

Florida is home to one of the largest HIV epidemics in the United States. As of 2023, there were 128,497 people living with diagnosed HIV across the state, and 4,725 new diagnoses were reported that year alone. The statewide prevalence rate is 574 per 100,000 people — meaning roughly 1 in every 175 Floridians is living with HIV1.

Florida has consistently ranked in the top three states for new HIV diagnoses. Seven Florida jurisdictions are designated as Ending the HIV Epidemic (EHE) priority areas by the federal government: Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach, Hillsborough, Orange, Duval, and Pinellas counties2. The Miami-Fort Lauderdale metro area has historically had the highest rate of new HIV diagnoses of any metropolitan area in the entire country — higher than New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, or Washington, D.C.

The new diagnosis rate statewide in 2024 was 19.4 per 100,000 population. But that number masks enormous variation. Some counties have rates more than double the state average, while others have rates near zero. Understanding this epidemic means understanding that Florida is not one epidemic — it is many, playing out across very different communities, geographies, and circumstances.

A State of Many Epidemics

Florida stretches over 65,000 square miles, spanning tropical Caribbean-influenced communities in the south to deeply rural, Southern-culture communities in the Panhandle. The HIV epidemic looks fundamentally different depending on where you are.

Who Is Most Affected

HIV in Florida does not affect all communities equally. The disparities are among the most pronounced in the country, driven by structural factors — poverty, lack of insurance, housing instability, incarceration, stigma — not individual behavior.

Race and Ethnicity

Of the 128,497 people living with HIV in Florida in 2023, 43 percent were Black, 27.9 percent were Hispanic/Latino, and 27 percent were White. Among new diagnoses in 2023, Black Floridians accounted for 2,129 of the 4,725 new cases — 45 percent of new diagnoses despite making up approximately 17 percent of the state's population4. Hispanic/Latino individuals accounted for 1,545 new diagnoses (33 percent). White Floridians accounted for 975 (21 percent). Of the 550 HIV-related deaths in 2023, 54 percent were among Black Floridians.

Gender and Transmission

The majority of new diagnoses in Florida are among men, with male-to-male sexual contact as the leading transmission category. However, Florida also has one of the highest rates of heterosexual transmission in the country, particularly among Black women. Women make up a significant portion of the epidemic in Florida in ways that differ from many other states.

Age and Aging

Florida is home to one of the largest populations of long-term HIV survivors in the nation. Many people diagnosed in the 1980s, 1990s, and early 2000s have been living with HIV for decades. They are now navigating the intersection of HIV and aging — managing cardiovascular disease, kidney function, bone density loss, cognitive changes, and the mental health toll of surviving an epidemic that killed so many of their peers. At the same time, young people ages 13 to 24 continue to account for a significant share of new diagnoses, particularly young Black and Latino men.

Immigrants and HIV in Florida

Florida has one of the largest immigrant populations of any state in the country. Since 1980, the state's population has doubled, driven in part by migration from Latin America and the Caribbean — regions where HIV prevalence is higher than in the United States and where HIV education has historically been limited. For many immigrants living with or at risk for HIV, Florida is both a destination of hope and a landscape of barriers.

The Haitian Community

Miami's Little Haiti and Little River neighborhoods are home to one of the largest Haitian diaspora communities in the world. Haitian immigrants face a constellation of barriers to HIV care that go beyond language. Research from the University of Miami and Jackson Memorial Medical Center found that among HIV-positive Haitian immigrants surveyed in Miami, approximately three-fourths had not graduated from high school and reported annual incomes of $5,000 or less5. Those without formal education and those experiencing high psychological distress were significantly less likely to attend regular HIV care visits.

Haitian immigrants have been found to be more likely than African Americans to be hospitalized for HIV-related complications and more likely to delay seeking care. The reasons include profound stigma within Haitian culture around HIV, distrust of the healthcare system rooted in historical mistreatment, language barriers (Haitian Creole is not widely supported in clinical settings), and fear of immigration consequences. Community organizations like the Center for Haitian Studies in Little Haiti provide free, culturally competent testing and care — conducting outreach in laundromats, churches, schools, and private homes because traditional outreach channels often miss this population entirely.

Caribbean-Born Black Immigrants

A Florida-specific study analyzing HIV surveillance data from 2000 to 2014 found that Caribbean-born Black immigrants were less likely to be retained in HIV care and less likely to achieve viral suppression than U.S.-born Black people, Hispanic people, or White people6. The disparities were most pronounced among Bahamian, Haitian, and Trinidadian and Tobagonian immigrants. Among Haitians and Jamaicans, men and those diagnosed in earlier years were at even greater risk of falling out of care.

Fear as a Barrier

In 2023, Florida enacted SB 1718, which among other provisions requires hospitals accepting Medicaid to ask patients about their immigration status and submit reports to the state. While the law frames this as data collection, its real-world effect has been to deepen fear. Medical providers in South Florida reported that undocumented patients began canceling appointments, avoiding emergency rooms, and skipping HIV medications after the law took effect.

That fear has been compounded at the federal level. In November 2025, the Department of Homeland Security proposed major changes to the public charge rule that would allow immigration officers to consider use of Medicaid, CHIP, and potentially other programs when evaluating residency applications. A 2025 KFF survey found that 36 percent of immigrants in households with a likely undocumented member reported stopping participation in programs that help pay for food, housing, or healthcare since January 20257.

Migrant Farmworkers

Florida's agricultural regions — Immokalee, Homestead, the citrus belt — are home to tens of thousands of migrant farmworkers, many undocumented, who face among the most extreme barriers to healthcare of any population in the state. They may live in employer-provided housing with no transportation, work long hours with no sick leave, speak indigenous languages not served by translation services, and have no interaction with the healthcare system whatsoever unless they develop a medical emergency. HIV testing, PrEP, and ongoing care are effectively inaccessible to many in these communities.

What Immigrants Should Know

The Latino Community and HIV in Florida

Hispanic and Latino communities are among the fastest-growing populations affected by HIV in Florida and nationally. In Florida in 2023, 1,545 new HIV diagnoses were among Hispanic/Latino individuals — accounting for nearly one in three new diagnoses statewide. Approximately 27.9 percent of all people living with HIV in Florida identify as Hispanic or Latino.

Nationally, the picture is even more striking. Between 2010 and 2022, while overall HIV diagnoses in the United States decreased by 12 percent, diagnoses among Hispanic/Latino people increased by 24 percent. The HIV diagnosis rate among Hispanic/Latino people is more than four times that of White people8. Among men, nine out of ten new HIV diagnoses among Hispanic/Latino men are attributed to male-to-male sexual contact.

Florida Is Not Monolithic

One of the most important things to understand about the Latino HIV epidemic in Florida is that "Latino" is not a single community. It encompasses dozens of nationalities, cultures, languages, migration histories, and risk profiles. Research from the Florida Department of Health found significant differences in HIV outcomes by country of birth. Latinos born in Mexico and Central America were more likely to receive a late-stage AIDS diagnosis — meaning they were diagnosed with AIDS within 30 days of their initial HIV diagnosis — compared to U.S.-born Latinos. This suggests these communities are reaching care far too late, often because they have had no prior interaction with the healthcare system.

In Florida specifically, the Latino community includes large populations from Cuba, Puerto Rico, Colombia, Venezuela, Honduras, Guatemala, the Dominican Republic, Mexico, Peru, and Argentina — each with different cultural relationships to healthcare, sexuality, stigma, and HIV.

Cultural Barriers

Stigma around HIV in many Latino cultures is deeply intertwined with stigma around homosexuality, gender nonconformity, and sexual health in general. The concept of machismo can discourage men — particularly men who have sex with men — from getting tested, disclosing their status, or seeking care, because doing so may be perceived as an admission of vulnerability or sexual identity that carries social consequences within their families and communities.

For many Latina women, power dynamics within relationships can limit their ability to negotiate condom use, suggest testing, or even acknowledge HIV as a possibility. Domestic violence, economic dependence, and cultural expectations around gender roles compound these barriers. Women may also face HIV-related stigma that intersects with judgment about their moral character in ways that men in the same communities do not.

Religious and spiritual beliefs also play a role. In communities where the Catholic Church or evangelical Protestantism is central to social life, conversations about sexual health, contraception, and HIV can be constrained by moral frameworks that equate HIV with sin. This can delay testing, discourage open discussion, and create a sense of shame that is profoundly isolating for people living with HIV.

Language and Access

While Spanish is widely spoken in Florida's healthcare systems — particularly in South Florida — language access is not uniform across the state. In Northern and Central Florida, Spanish-speaking patients may encounter providers who do not have bilingual staff or adequate interpreter services. Beyond Spanish, communities from indigenous backgrounds in Guatemala, Mexico, and other Central American countries may speak Mam, K'iche', Q'eqchi', or other languages with virtually no clinical interpretation available.

Health literacy also varies significantly. For people who have recently arrived from countries with limited public health infrastructure, concepts like viral load, CD4 count, U=U, and PrEP may be entirely unfamiliar. Effective care requires not just translation but culturally grounded education — meeting people where they are, in language and in understanding.

Bright Spots

Florida has community organizations doing extraordinary work within Latino communities. Organizations like Care Resource in Miami, Borinquen Medical Centers, and community health centers across Central Florida provide bilingual, culturally competent HIV testing, PrEP access, and care navigation. Promotores de salud (community health workers) bring HIV education directly into neighborhoods, churches, workplaces, and homes. These programs work because they meet people in their own language, in their own communities, on their own terms.

LGBTQ+ Communities and HIV in Florida

Florida’s HIV epidemic and Florida’s LGBTQ+ communities are inseparable. Gay and bisexual men, transgender women, LGBTQ+ youth, and the community centers that serve them have been at the center of the state’s response since the earliest years of the epidemic. They are also the communities that recent Florida legislation has most directly targeted — through classroom-instruction restrictions, gender-affirming care bans, and Medicaid rules that reach deep into HIV prevention and treatment. This section is about the epidemiology and the anchors of care, plainly stated.

Gay and Bisexual Men

Male-to-male sexual contact remains the leading transmission category for adult men living with HIV in Florida. In 2023, 55 percent of adult male HIV diagnoses in Florida were attributed to male-to-male sexual contact, with another 1 percent attributed to male-to-male sexual contact combined with injection drug use.11 Nationally in 2024, 65 percent of all new HIV diagnoses were attributed to male-to-male sexual contact.12 Among males, that share rises to 81 percent.13

The burden falls hardest in Miami-Dade. In 2022, 71 percent of new HIV diagnoses in Miami-Dade County were among men who have sex with men, up from 67 percent in 2018.14 Latino gay and bisexual men shoulder a disproportionate share of that count — a pattern documented across peer-reviewed research on Miami as an Ending the HIV Epidemic priority jurisdiction. In 2022, an estimated 21,760 people in Miami-Dade had a clinical indication for PrEP, but only about half received a prescription; in Orange County (Orlando), only 37.9 percent of people with a PrEP indication were prescribed it.15 These are the gaps prevention has to close.

Transgender Floridians

National surveillance data undercounts transgender people living with HIV, in part because federal case-report forms categorize exposure by sex assigned at birth — which means many trans women are still counted under “male-to-male sexual contact” even when their own lives and identities are otherwise. What we do know: in 2022, transgender people accounted for 2 percent of new HIV diagnoses in the U.S., with transgender women representing the overwhelming majority of that count.16 Peer-reviewed research on Florida’s surveillance system estimates HIV prevalence among transgender women in the state at roughly 28 percent, with Black transgender women bearing a disproportionate share — a disparity consistent across national data.17

Access to care matters. Florida’s Senate Bill 254, signed in 2023, restricts gender-affirming care for adults and bans it for minors. A federal district court struck the law down in 2024 in Doe v. Ladapo, finding it unconstitutional. In August 2024 the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals stayed that ruling, and as of August 2026 the appeal remains pending — meaning the restrictions are currently in effect for transgender Floridians.18 For transgender Floridians living with HIV, gender-affirming care and HIV care are not separate concerns. Losing a trusted provider — or losing Medicaid coverage for hormones — often means losing the relationship that also carries ART refills, viral-load monitoring, and mental health support. Coordinated care is the standard; policy in Florida has made it harder to reach.

LGBTQ+ Youth

Florida’s 2022 House Bill 1557, expanded by HB 1069 in 2023, restricts classroom instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity from pre-K through eighth grade, with narrow exceptions for state-required health lessons on HIV in grades six through eight.19 The AIDS Healthcare Foundation and other public-health groups have documented how the law’s vague language chills honest classroom conversation about the very topics young people need to make informed decisions about testing, PrEP, and consent.20 Community organizations have partly filled that gap. In 2025, several Central Florida LGBTQ+ organizations reported federal and state funding losses for HIV testing programs, including a roughly $250,000 grant cut from Zebra Youth in Orlando that had been earmarked to expand LGBTQ+ youth HIV services.21

Community Anchors

Florida’s LGBTQ+ community organizations do work the state does not. In Miami, Pridelines provides free HIV and STI testing, counseling, and youth drop-in services rooted in the LGBTQ+ community it serves. In Broward County, SunServe in Wilton Manors offers LGBTQ+-affirming mental health care, HIV case management, HOPWA housing assistance, transgender support groups, and youth programming.22 Latinos Salud, also in Wilton Manors, focuses on bilingual Latino gay, bisexual, and trans communities with health navigation and Ryan White case management. In Central Florida, the LGBT+ Center Orlando runs rapid HIV testing and connects people to care, while Zebra Youth and the broader Zebra Coalition serve LGBTQ+ young people ages 13–24 — including those experiencing homelessness. These organizations are how the numbers move.

The Policy Landscape

Florida's HIV epidemic cannot be separated from the policy choices that shape it. Some of these policies directly affect care access; others create a broader environment that determines whether people feel safe seeking help.

Medicaid Non-Expansion

Florida is one of 10 states that has not expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act9. This means that many low-income adults — particularly those without children — fall into a coverage gap: they earn too much to qualify for traditional Medicaid but too little to qualify for ACA marketplace subsidies. For people living with HIV, this gap can mean the difference between consistent access to antiretroviral therapy and no coverage at all.

ADAP and the 2025 Crisis

The AIDS Drug Assistance Program (ADAP) is a lifeline for thousands of Floridians living with HIV who cannot afford their medications. In early 2025, proposed changes to Florida's ADAP program put more than 16,000 people at risk of losing medication coverage and premium assistance. The crisis prompted a statewide advocacy mobilization — including an Online Day of Action organized through RiseUpToHIV that reached over 176,000 people. The public comment period generated significant community response, and legislative proposals are still being worked out. The ADAP crisis illustrated how fragile access to care can be when it depends on state-level policy decisions. Read more on our Policy page.

HIV Criminalization

Florida has some of the most aggressively enforced HIV criminalization laws in the country. Under current Florida law, a person who knows they are HIV-positive can be charged with a felony for sexual contact without disclosing their status — regardless of whether transmission occurred, regardless of viral load, and regardless of whether condoms were used. These laws predate the science of U=U and have been used disproportionately against Black Floridians and sex workers. They do not reduce HIV transmission; they discourage testing and disclosure. Read our full deep dive on HIV criminalization in Florida.

Sex Education

Florida does not mandate comprehensive sex education. Where sex education is taught, it must emphasize abstinence as the expected standard. This means that many young Floridians receive little or no information about condoms, PrEP, HIV testing, or how HIV is actually transmitted — leaving them to navigate risk with incomplete or inaccurate information.

Finding Care in Florida

Despite the challenges, Florida has a robust HIV care infrastructure. The Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program funds clinics across every region of the state. Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs) serve patients regardless of ability to pay or immigration status. Organizations like CAN Community Health, AHF Healthcare Centers, and Care Resource operate across multiple Florida counties. ADAP provides medication assistance for people who qualify.

The problem is not always that care does not exist. It is that people do not know it exists, do not know they are eligible, are afraid to access it, or cannot physically get to it. That is why we built the Care Locator — to make finding care as simple as possible.

If you or someone you know is living with HIV in Florida and needs help connecting to care, you can also reach us directly at kevin@riseuptohiv.com. You are not alone. Care is available. And it works.