To mark World AIDS Day, the Ile-de-France Regional Health Observatory is releasing, as it has done every year since 1999, an overview of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the region. In 2006, we felt it necessary to offer some insights into the issue of young people and HIV/AIDS and into communication strategies regarding HIV/AIDS aimed at this demographic. The National Institute for Prevention and Health Education (INPES) collaborated on this Health Bulletin to present some principles underpinning public communication about HIV directed at young people. In fact, in the Île-de-France region, young people aged 15–24 accounted for 8% of HIV-positive diagnoses between 2003 and 2005 (420 cases out of 5,259). Nearly all of these adolescents and young adults were infected through sexual contact (76% through heterosexual contact and 23% through homosexual contact), and the vast majority are foreign nationals (64%). In contrast to what is observed for all new HIV diagnoses, a large majority of these cases are diagnosed in women (68% versus 44% across all age groups). Nevertheless, HIV/AIDS prevention efforts targeting young people over the past twenty years have borne fruit: young people today have a good understanding of the disease and greater tolerance toward those living with it; they have adopted condom use as the norm, particularly during their first sexual encounter, and have incorporated testing into their prevention strategy. However, recent surveys (KABP metropolitan 2004, Health Barometer 2005) and older ones (ACSJ) show that these benefits are not shared equally by all young people. Significant differences, observed particularly according to educational pathways, indicate that social inequalities exist in access to prevention. It is therefore essential today to consider actions that better address the needs of young people who are outside the school system or who leave it prematurely. The significant proportion of women among those diagnosed with HIV among adolescents and young adults also calls for the development of communication strategies that take this specific demographic into account.[article excerpt]