Entre Hermanos has joined Public Health – Seattle & King County to launch a new campaign and video on National Latino AIDS Awareness Day called, All Together: The Latino HIV Testing Campaign, or Todos Juntos: Campaña Latina para la Prueba del VIH.

Directed by local filmmaker Drew Emery, the video features a broad cross-section of Latino and Latina community members raising the importance of routine HIV testing as a healthy community norm.

Testing for HIV is vital to reduce the disproportionate impact of HIV and AIDS on Latinos. Latinos represent 6 percent of the population in King County, but 13 percent of the people recently diagnosed with HIV.

“This project has already had a tremendous response from the community. It’s been really powerful to provide an outlet for community voices to be heard on an issue that matters to them,” said Marcos Martinez, Executive Director of Entre Hermanos, Seattle’s Latino lesbian gay bisexual and transgender organization.

The new campaign video will be released Friday, and posted on the Entre Hermanos and Public Health websites. These two organizations will ask Latino community members and others to share the video widely via social media like Facebook, Twitter, blogs, and email, with a personalized message such as, “I get tested for HIV regularly because I care about my health. Will you get tested?”

There are more than 750 people in King County who are Latino and have HIV or AIDS, and around 40 percent of them received a late diagnosis, meaning they were diagnosed with AIDS within 12 months of their first positive HIV test result.

Approximately 15 percent of the people with HIV in the county don’t know it, because they haven’t tested recently. When people don’t know their status, they can still unwittingly pass on the virus to others through unprotected sex or by sharing needles. It also is vital for all pregnant women to get tested, so they can prevent the spread of HIV to their newborns.

There are low-cost options to pay for HIV testing and treatment if people have HIV or AIDS. And there are more HIV testing options than ever before, including places with Spanish speaking staff like Consejo, Sea Mar, Entre Hermanos, Gay City, Public Health clinics, and several community health clinics. Go to Public Health’s HIV/STD Program website for more information about these clinics or SabiaUD.org for information in Spanish. Or, to find confidential testing resources near you, visit www.hivtest.org, a fully English-Spanish bilingual site.

To sign up to receive the video upon its release, go to www.surveygizmo.com or call 206-205-6105 (English) or 206-322-7700 (Spanish).