When Ella Dawson got diagnosed with genital herpes, she felt like her body betrayed her. Herpes was something dirty, something bad that happened to other people. For a 20-something coming into her sexuality and body confidence, a sexually transmitted infection was a huge setback. It took Dawson the next couple years to understand the diagnosis — how the disease worked and how she experienced it in her body — all while navigating stigma that painted her as promiscuous and irresponsible rather than the recipient of an infection that affects 776,000 people in the U.S. each year. Herpes is more common than many people realize, says Dr. Peter Leone , a professor at the UNC-Chapel Hill School of Medicine and an adjunct associate professor of epidemiology at the Gillings School of Global Public Health. An estimated one in eight people in the U.S. have the herpes simplex virus type 2, which causes most cases of genital herpes. As many as one in two people have the herpes simplex virus type 1,