Local health nonprofit CEO details why HIV testing is still important to fight the spread of the disease

The AIDS epidemic thrust HIV awareness into the spotlight, but years after its peak, a local nonprofit is urging people to know their status. 

Sunburst Projects estimates, as of 2018, over 131,000 individuals were living with HIV/AIDS in California, with 4,285 in Sacramento County. And that 1 in 7 of those who are infected with the virus do not know they have it, which contributes to the continued spread of the disease.

Jake Bradley-Rowe, the CEO of Sunburst Projects joined Vicki Gonzalez on Insight to share why there is a greater need for women and heterosexual men to get tested.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Interview highlights

In March of 2022, Sacramento County was one of the hotspots for new HIV infections in the United States. What does that look like today? Has there been improvement or progress? 

Prior to COVID, we had seen a really good reduction in the spread of HIV and new cases. Then when COVID hit and we saw that spike [in HIV cases]. Obviously, testing facilities slowed down and closed their doors. We lost a few [testing facilities] because of funding cuts.

There was a lot of work to be done afterwards. We saw an increase that brought us back up to around the 2015 numbers. And we're slowly seeing that come back [down]. So, we're right about where we were prior to COVID again. The work really is about education though.

[Previously], we had been focused mostly on working with folks that were already diagnosed and we felt it was really important to have an overall comprehensive look at how we could serve the community and really that was about educating and getting out there. We launched a public awareness campaign and we've now seen thousands of people walk through our doors. The key to what that did for us was allow us to open a clinic that is low barrier that we can provide confidential testing.

We're the only clinic in Sacramento that has a walk-in policy. We do not require appointments. For folks where getting an HIV test has a stigma associated with it, it's really important to have those low-barrier opportunities where we're not asking lots of questions. We don't bill your insurance. Your visit to Sunburst is not trackable on your phone because you don't have an appointment in your calendar. 

Are you still diagnosing people regularly? 

Yeah, all the time. Like I said in Sacramento County, all of the community partners as a whole are roughly diagnosing about 180 individuals [per year]. And we know there's a lot more out there. So, the more opportunity we have to get people in and understand that getting an HIV test is an important part of your sexual health. 

If you're sexually active, you should be thinking about getting a test every year. If you're in some of these what they call high risk groups, men who have sex with men, men who have or individuals who have multiple sexual partners, you should be getting regular tests. Maybe it's every other month or every month depending on what is appropriate for you, but establishing that routine testing is key. 

I mean you also say there's this greater need of you know, urging women, heterosexual men to also get tested. What's driving that messaging?

In Sacramento, 20% of the individuals living with HIV are women. And of those 20%, eighty of them contracted HIV through heterosexual sexual activities. And so it's really important that women recognize that HIV is not a gay man's virus. In the beginning we referred to HIV as GRID, gay-related immune disease, before it was given the name HIV. Even back in the 80s and 90s when we saw so many visual pictures of gay men and the attacks that were happening on that community because they thought it was a gay-related issue. That's just not the truth today. 

At Sunburst Projects, you know, we started as an organization focused on women and children. And we've continued to try to spread the word that it's important that women take care of themselves as much as men.

And oftentimes we see the spread through heterosexual activity because men who they're interacting with, don't know their status. So we want people to know that if you're sexually active, take that power into your hands, get an HIV test. [It takes] twenty minutes. It's a pretty simple finger prick where we take a drop of blood and we get you your results. Right now, ‘everyday folks’ are coming in and they leave our office educated knowing more and we hope that they're spreading the word how easy it is, how empowering it can be. 

A big piece of prevention is treatment. PrEP (pre-exposure prophylactus) has become a very highly effective medication that people take to prevent contracting HIV. How accessible is this medication today? 

In California we're very lucky to have the ability to get PrEP even easier than a lot of other places. PrEP, if you don't know about it, is either a once-a-day pill or an injection that you can get every couple months, which protects you at 99.99% from contracting HIV. It's a preventative, essentially, and in Sacramento County, we have a couple thousand people on it. We should have a lot more. We have a current campaign that says PrEP is for everyone. And that's reality.

If you're sexually active and you want to protect yourself from the chance of contracting HIV, get PrEP. You can get it at your local primary care provider. You can come to Sunburst Projects. We work with many local partners including Federally Qualified Health Centers in the county of Sacramento. And we can get you in with a prescribing doctor, do some lab work, and get you onto one of the options for PrEP.

If someone is uncomfortable with this topic. Maybe it feels a little bit taboo. How do you suggest they start talking about it and broach the subject? 

There's a lot of information out there on the internet and even places like our website at sunburstprojects.org. We offer information about what it means to be sexually active and protect yourself. I think that when we arm ourselves with the right language and we feel comfortable when we're talking about it, when we approach others. We're able to communicate and feel a little more comfortable about it. You know, sexual activity is this taboo thing, but the reality is almost all adults engage in it.

And I can tell you when I took over Sunburst some years ago as the Executive Director, I always felt a little odd having conversations about it and over the years it's gotten much easier. Even with my own family, my parents and friends. The fact is that it is something that everyone does. And I feel like when we take that power into our hands of just knowing our own status or talking about the fact that maybe we're on PrEP, we're helping to educate other people.