(mellow pensive music) - And I think a lot of people have... Well, they have a lot of different fears and experiences when it comes to dealing with something that's related to HIV.

(mellow pensive music) - This is HIV prevention, I do every eight weeks.

The other gay men are more comfortable saying, "Yeah, I'm on PrEP."

- With stigma, it is probably a reason why some people don't seek care for protection and prevention of HIV when they really should.

(mellow pensive music) - I feel safe on it, I feel comfortable on it.

(mellow pensive music) - It's helped people live healthier, happier lives.

(mellow pensive music) - I began taking PrEP actually May of 2023.

I was in a long-term monogamous relationship, and at the time I didn't think that I necessarily needed PrEP, and it's not something my partner thought we needed as well at the time.

After like months of sort of being newly single, and now that they had multiple options for PrEP, it made sense, and I thought that it was the right health choice for myself and the right just decision overall.

(pensive music) - PrEP is a drug that is used to help prevent the transition of new HIV infection.

If you are engaging in unprotected sex with multiple sex partners, PrEP is probably a drug that you want to consider using.

(pensive music) HIV attacks the immune system, CD4 cells in your body, and weakens them against other diseases or illnesses that can enter the human body.

So it reduces the defense mechanism to prevent other things like the flu.

You're more susceptible to getting sick.

(pensive music) It exists as a pill or as an injection.

And so the pill is a medication that you take once a day; the injection is a medication that you get at your doctor's office.

(mellow music) I didn't really see as much education around safer sex and AIDS after the mid to late '90s.

- [Interviewer] And you are a gay man.

- [Richard] Yes.

- [Interviewer] And do you think that what you learned as a young person and your education kind of led you to the work that you're doing now?

- Yeah, I think that being a social worker and having the empathy and understanding naturally that I've had, in addition to very early on volunteering in a community clinic, doing HIV education when I was in college really kind of pushed me into the field I'm in just because it was something that I saw as a need at the time for more compassion, more understanding.

Stigma has been around with HIV from the very beginning, and a lot of that has to do with the way that we approached it as a culture, a society, a government.

People were not very welcoming of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the country.

- This is part of being alive, being a human being, and so my job as a provider is to say, "How can you do these things, but do them in a way that's safe and healthy as possible?"

- We have a PrEP toolkit that AIDS Free Pittsburgh has designed.

It is for medical staff.

So we want primary care doctors to read it and understand how to prescribe PrEP properly and get it to their clients if they are asked for it.

- And I think many primary care physicians have this idea that the medications is really difficult to use or really harmful for your health.

And that's not the case anymore.

The newer medications are easy to take and the side effects are really minimal.

(uplifting music) - People do like that they can kind of find us and get testing at a place that's convenient to them.

(signage clattering) Access to testing services is absolutely making a difference in HIV diagnoses and getting people into care.

- When we started AIDS Free Pittsburgh in 2015, we were seeing on about 140 people being newly infected with HIV.

We've dropped our rates by about 50% since.

(ambient music) HIV is still here, and it's still something that we are struggling with in ways that can't be addressed.

There is disproportionate health across the region.

And if we're not addressing those issues and helping others out, then why are we here?

(gentle upbeat music) PrEP plays a huge significance in the landscape of changing how we look at HIV.

It helped reduce stigma around having sex.

It has reduced new infection drastically nationally.

So it has made a huge impact from the beginning of HIV to now.

It's day and night.

(mellow music) - And I feel like I'm making a good choice for myself and anyone that I might choose to engage with sexually and have a relationship with.

So I feel like it's me being smart for myself, but also anyone else.

(lighthearted music) More gay men are feeling comfortable talking to each other about it 'cause then they're basically saying to each other, "Well, I'm protecting myself, I'm on PrEP."

"Oh you are, too?

That's great."

And the more people are on it, the more we're protecting a larger community.

And you being on it, you're adding to that protection.

You're protecting yourself, but you're protecting everyone that you potentially are interacting with and having as a relationship with.

And it just shows that if we become more open and honest about it and see it sort of growing, I believe then we're gonna see more people maybe not getting HIV.

(lighthearted uplifting music) (lighthearted uplifting music continues)