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The AIDS Funding Collaborative will welcome Bruce Richman, the founder of the Undetectable=Untransmittable campaign, to speak at Case Western University’s Tinkham Veale University Center on January 23. Local advocates living with HIV will be available to speak at the event, or in the days before it about the personal impact U=U has had on their lives.
U=U focuses on science showing people with undetectable levels of HIV in their blood can’t transmit virus
Starting in 2011, multiple scientific studies have shown that those with very low, or undetectable, levels of HIV in their blood could not transmit the virus to others. Since 2016, Richman has been travelling the globe, promoting the idea and the science behind it.
“I think it’s important for people to understand that we’re in a new age when it comes to HIV and AIDS education that it’s not the way that it used to be,” said local HIV/AIDS advocate Naimah O’Neal. “I just want to make sure that people understand that U=U affects the community, it affects people who are negative [for the HIV virus] and positive [for the HIV virus].”
By promoting the science of U=U, the advocacy campaign aims to reduce the stigma around HIV/AIDS, encourage more people to get tested for the virus and to stop the spread of HIV.
“I think it gives me personally a great deal of comfort knowing that I cannot transmit HIV to anyone else because in the first years I was living with HIV there were always doubts about my activities and would it endanger somebody else and now I absolutely know that I’m not going to endanger anyone else,” said local HIV/AIDS advocate Brooke Willis.
The evening event is sponsored by the AIDS Funding Collaborative, the Cleveland Department of Public Health, Cuyahoga County Board of Health, Ryan White Program and the Case Western Reserve/UH AIDS Clinical Trials Unit.
Who: Bruce Richman, and local advocates living with HIV/AIDS
Where: The Case Western Reserve University Tinkham Veale University Center
11038 Bellflower Road, Cleveland.
When: Program begins at 6:30 pm
