“Our Health, Our Future” is the theme of this year’s National Hispanic/Latinx Health Leadership Summit, taking place March 2 to 3 in Washington, DC, according to a press announcement by the Hispanic Health Network, which organizes the event.

Advocates at the summit aim to create a health policy agenda that addresses HIV, stigma, viral hepatitis, sexually transmitted infection, access to care and other health issues that affect the Latinx population in the United States.

Maria Roman of the Translatin@ Coalition promotes the National Hispanic/Latinx Health Leadership Summit 2020

Maria Roman of the Translatin@ Coalition promotes the National Hispanic/Latinx Health Leadership Summit 2020YouTube/Latino Commission on AIDS

“The end goal is to produce an agenda, a health policy,” said Guillermo Chacón, president of Latino Commission on AIDS, in a video promotion for the summit (you can watch the video at the top of this article). “And the second thing is an implementation plan. We are going to monitor and make ourselves accountable or anybody that serves and provides health care services to the Hispanic population.”

Maria Roman of the Translatin@ Coalition added: “We are looking at a plethora of issues that affect us as Latinx people. As a trans woman, it’s important that I am here because many times when it comes to policy, when it comes to program development, I’m not included as part of the execution and development.”

Latinx (pronounced “la-teen-ex”) is a gender-neutral alternative to Latino and Latina. 

The summit opened Monday morning with a moment of silence in honor of a transgender woman, Alexa, who was murdered the previous week in Puerto Rico. In San Juan, flags were lowered to honor Alexa’s memory, and on The Tonight Show, Puerto Rican singer Bad Bunny paid tribute to Alexa during a recent performance, reports The Washington Blade.