Oregon health officials spread word of HIV prevention drug
A groundbreaking medication could help thousands of people around the country. But that’s only if people know about it — and many don’t, prompting efforts in Oregon to spread the word.
Truvada is the first and only FDA-approved medication a person can take to prevent themselves from getting HIV. It’s a pre-exposure prophylaxis, more commonly called ‘PrEP,’ and helps people who have a higher risk of getting HIV by taking one pill every day.
Studies show Truvada is up to 99 percent effective, when taken correctly.
The drug was approved in 2012, but health officials say not enough people know about it. They say part of the reason for that is the stigma surrounding the disease and the people who have it.
“That would be people like black and Latino women, young people, men having sex with men, trans population in central Oregon,” Tricia Wilder of Planned Parenthood said Tuesday. “When you’ve already experienced health disparities, it makes it harder to seek out that information and to get those services.”
The Oregon Health Authority reports 193 people in the state contracted HIV last year.
Like all medicines, Truvada is not right for everyone. However, health officials say they want to get the word out and break the negative perceptions many people have to face.
Erin Butler of the Cascades AIDS Project in Portland is one of the people fighting to raise awareness.
“Its been a really slow process of getting the word out there, and I think there’s a lot of reasons for that,” Butler said. “In the long run, I hope we’re in a culture where people have access to more information and can make more educated decisions for themselves, and have conversations with their partners.”
Both Butler and Wilder say they believe education and access to health care are the keys to preventing the spread of HIV – a disease which, at one point, was a death sentence.
“I think yes, those are the points of success for health care, especially in a population that can otherwise be marginalized,” Wilder said.
Butler’s been in the public health sector for more than a decade. He said he’s seen a big change in access ever since the Affordable Care Act came into play, because it opened up health care to a new group of people.
He also said people are seeing other benefits to their PrEP treatments, ones that no one was expecting.
“What’s been most amazing is watching people engage in health care who wouldn’t have. They would not have gone to the doctor if it wasn’t for PrEP,” Butler said. “It gives people choices which they haven’t really had.”
Butler said people are living more freely since they’re not weighed down by the anxiety of getting HIV and they’re experiencing the intimacy one can have with their partner that they couldn’t have before
Find more information on PreP here:
http://www.ispreprightforme.com/
