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The short version: SisterLove, Inc. was founded in Atlanta, Georgia in 1989 by Dázon Dixon Diallo. It is the first women's HIV/AIDS and reproductive justice organization in the southeastern United States.1 Diallo, then a 24-year-old health educator at the Feminist Women's Health Center in Atlanta, started SisterLove because women — particularly Black women in the South — had nowhere to go for HIV information, testing, and support that treated them as full human beings rather than as vectors of transmission to men or fetuses.2 Its signature program, the Healthy Love Party — a peer-led home-based HIV prevention workshop for women — was designated a CDC evidence-based best-practice intervention.3 Diallo is still president. The organization now operates in Atlanta and in South Africa. She is also a founding member of the 30 for 30 Campaign for Women in the National HIV/AIDS Strategy.1
The Southeastern U.S. accounts for the majority of new HIV diagnoses in the country, and Black women in the South carry the highest per-capita burden of any women's group in the U.S. SisterLove has been in that fight since before most people knew there was a fight.
Dázon Dixon Diallo — a Peach County origin story
Dázon Dixon Diallo, DHL, MPH
Born in Fort Valley, Georgia (Peach County). Founder and President, SisterLove, Inc., since 1989.
Diallo grew up in Fort Valley, Georgia — also known as Peach County — a small rural town in central Georgia. Her family, and her mother especially, taught her early that Black women had to make their own tables when they were not invited to sit at anyone else's. She studied at Spelman College in Atlanta, one of the country's historic Black women's colleges, and started work at the Feminist Women's Health Center in 1986 during her senior year.2
At the health center, women started walking in asking about AIDS. Diallo could not find a single women's HIV support group in Atlanta, or in the entire Southeast. She looked. There was nothing. So she started one.
The 1989 founding — a support group becomes an institution
SisterLove began in 1989 as an in-house women's HIV support group at the Feminist Women's Health Center. Within a year it was doing outreach at Atlanta shelters, drug-treatment programs, and public housing. Within three years it had spun off as an independent 501(c)(3) organization with its own staff, and Diallo was its executive director. She has never left.4
The founding framework built into SisterLove from day one was what would later be formalized as reproductive justice — a term coined in 1994 by a group of twelve Black women (including SisterSong co-founder Loretta Ross, Diallo herself, and others) at a Chicago pro-choice conference. Reproductive justice holds that reproductive rights are inseparable from human rights, economic justice, immigration status, mass incarceration, LGBTQ rights, and yes, HIV. It is why SisterLove has always framed HIV prevention alongside abortion access, sexual violence, and Black maternal mortality.5
The Healthy Love Party — SisterLove's signature intervention
The Healthy Love Party is SisterLove's flagship community-based HIV prevention program. It is a two-hour, single-session workshop delivered in a private home, hosted by a woman for the women in her life — her sisters, cousins, friends, church group. A trained facilitator leads participants through HIV/STI education, condom demonstrations (both external and internal condoms), risk-reduction planning, and a group conversation about pleasure and self-worth.3
Federally recognized best-practice intervention
Healthy Love was formally designated a "best-evidence" behavioral intervention by the CDC's Diffusion of Effective Behavioral Interventions (DEBI) program based on a randomized-controlled evaluation showing statistically significant increases in condom use, HIV testing, and sexual communication skills among participants at 3- and 6-month follow-up.6
The genius of the model is that it is not a lecture in a clinic. It is a home party, where women who already trust each other talk to each other, and where the entry point is not "you might have HIV" — it is "you deserve pleasure, safety, and information."
Why reproductive justice belongs at the center of HIV work
Reproductive justice is not a slogan at SisterLove. It is a diagnostic framework the organization uses to interpret why women in the South get HIV at the rates they do — and what has to change for them not to.
Sexual autonomy
A woman who cannot say no or negotiate condom use cannot protect herself from HIV. This is not a personal-responsibility problem — it is a power problem, and it is often mediated by economic dependence, immigration status, and violence.
Bodily integrity
Forced sterilization, coerced Norplant/Depo, forced HIV testing at pregnancy, and prosecutions for HIV transmission during pregnancy or breastfeeding are all attacks on Black women's bodily autonomy. SisterLove opposes all of them.
Parenting on our own terms
Women living with HIV have the right to have children safely on antiretroviral therapy. Women without HIV have the right to prevent pregnancy or to have children. This is HIV work.
Access to information
The right to comprehensive, medically accurate, non-abstinence-only sex education for young women — especially in the South, where abstinence-only remains dominant — is inseparable from HIV prevention.
Programs today
Healthy Love Party
Home-based CDC best-practice HIV prevention workshop. Still SisterLove's flagship intervention.
LOVE-U Peer Educator Program
Trains young women of color in Atlanta as HIV/STI peer educators in their schools and communities.
South Africa Office
Capacity-building for local women-led HIV organizations in a rural municipality near Johannesburg.
Policy & Advocacy
Federal HIV strategy engagement (30 for 30), Georgia HIV criminalization reform, Ryan White reauthorization, and Medicaid expansion advocacy.
PrEP Outreach
Women-focused PrEP navigation and education, addressing the massive gap between women's HIV risk in the South and women's PrEP uptake. See PrEP page.
Reproductive Justice Institute
Multi-year fellowship training the next generation of Black women reproductive-justice leaders across the South.
The South Africa office — 2001
In 2001, SisterLove opened a program office in a rural South African municipality near Johannesburg. The focus is capacity building and sustainable development for local women-led HIV/AIDS organizations. It was Diallo's own decision to expand SisterLove internationally: after multiple visits to South Africa in the late 1990s, she saw the same pattern — Black women carrying an enormous HIV burden while being handed male-designed intervention curricula — and she saw the same institutional gap SisterLove had filled in Atlanta.1
The South Africa office remains operational today and works with several local partner organizations on prevention, treatment adherence, and gender-based-violence programming.
The numbers behind the mission
Black women and HIV in the American South
Black women accounted for approximately 51% of new HIV diagnoses among women in the United States in 2023, despite being only 14% of U.S. women. Nine of the ten U.S. states with the highest per-capita new HIV diagnoses are in the South. Georgia ranks in the top five for new diagnoses in women in almost every year of the past decade.7
Atlanta metro-area context
The Atlanta metropolitan area has HIV diagnosis rates roughly two to three times the national average, with disproportionately high rates among Black women and Black gay/bisexual men. This is SisterLove's home base and case study.8
Timeline — 1965 to today
Dázon Dixon born and raised in Peach County, Georgia.
Begins work at the Feminist Women's Health Center in Atlanta as a senior at Spelman College.
Founds SisterLove as an in-house women's HIV support group at FWHC.
SisterLove incorporates as an independent 501(c)(3) nonprofit.
Launches the Healthy Love Party program.
Diallo is one of the 12 Black women who coin the term "reproductive justice" at a Chicago conference.
Founding member of SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective.
Opens SisterLove's South Africa office.
Healthy Love designated a CDC DEBI best-evidence intervention.
Diallo becomes a founding member of the 30 for 30 Campaign for Women in the National HIV/AIDS Strategy.
Named a Woman of Distinction by the National Association of Commissions for Women.
SisterLove celebrates its 30th anniversary.
Launches the Reproductive Justice Institute fellowship.
Diallo still serves as founder and president. SisterLove continues operating in Atlanta and Johannesburg.
Questions people ask
Is SisterLove only for Black women?
SisterLove was founded to fill a gap for Black women in the South — and centers Black women in its programming, staff, and leadership — but its services are available to all women who need them.
Where is SisterLove based?
Headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia, with a program office in a rural municipality near Johannesburg, South Africa.
What is a Healthy Love Party?
A two-hour, single-session home HIV prevention workshop for women, hosted by a woman for the women in her life, and led by a trained facilitator. It is federally recognized as a best-practice HIV prevention intervention.
How can I host a Healthy Love Party?
Contact SisterLove directly at sisterlove.org. Availability depends on location, facilitator availability, and program capacity. In the Atlanta area they are hosted regularly; elsewhere, SisterLove trains facilitators in partner organizations.
What is reproductive justice?
A framework, coined in 1994 by twelve Black women including Dázon Dixon Diallo, that holds three human rights: the right to have a child, the right not to have a child, and the right to parent the children we have in safe and sustainable communities.
How can I support SisterLove?
Donate at sisterlove.org, subscribe to their newsletter, follow their advocacy on social media, or join a local chapter or partner organization. Diallo also frequently speaks publicly — attending a talk and amplifying her voice is meaningful.
References & Sources
Rutgers IWL, SisterLove, CDC, KFF, AIDSVu, SisterSong, National Women's Health Network.
- Rutgers University Institute for Women's Leadership. Dázon Dixon Diallo Oral History and Biography. 2021. iwl.rutgers.edu — official biographical interview ↵ ↵ ↵
- SisterLove, Inc. About Us — Founder's Story. sisterlove.org — official founding story ↵ ↵
- SisterLove. Healthy Love Program. Program overview and evidence base. sisterlove.org — Healthy Love Party ↵ ↵
- POZ Magazine. Dázon Dixon Diallo: 30 Years of SisterLove. poz.com — anniversary retrospective ↵
- SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective. Reproductive Justice. Origin and framework. sistersong.net — RJ framework origin ↵
- CDC. Compendium of Evidence-Based Interventions and Best Practices for HIV Prevention. Healthy Love best-evidence listing. cdc.gov — DEBI evidence-based interventions ↵
- CDC. HIV Surveillance Report 2023 — Women. cdc.gov — women and HIV 2023 ↵
- AIDSVu. Atlanta HIV Data Snapshot. Emory Rollins School of Public Health. aidsvu.org — Atlanta metro HIV data ↵
- Ross, Loretta & Solinger, Rickie. Reproductive Justice: An Introduction. University of California Press, 2017. Publisher record. ucpress.edu — foundational RJ text
- KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation). Black Women and HIV in the United States. kff.org — Black women and HIV fact sheet