S4 E9 From Red Ribbons to Leather Straps: Rodney McCoy’s Trailblazing Tale of HIV Prevention and Pleasure 

S4 E9 From Red Ribbons to Leather Straps: Rodney McCoy’s Trailblazing Tale of HIV Prevention and Pleasure 

In this episode, Rodney McCoy, a Black queer man with over four decades of experience in HIV prevention and education, shares his journey as a Leatherman of color and discusses the intersection of BDSM, kink, and HIV prevention. From his entry into the kink community to becoming a titleholder in the American Leatherman competition, Rodney emphasizes how the kink community provided a safe space for self-discovery and empowerment. The episode explores the link between pleasure, power dynamics, and HIV prevention, highlighting the importance of honest conversations, sex positivity training, and the destigmatization of “risky behavior.”  

Rodney, a health educator, program director, adjunct professor, and researcher, emphasizes the partnership between healthcare professionals and patients in promoting sexual health. Rodney says, “I am about encouraging people to embrace all pleasure: sexual pleasure, pleasure that comes from good mental health, from good physical health and from good social connections. I believe as healthcare professionals, regardless of the field we’re in, we are arbiters to help assist our clients explore and enhance that pleasure, that good health in their lives.”  Rodney shares personal experiences as an HIV/STI testing specialist, addressing the impact of stigma and the importance of open communication. 

Download the transcript of this episode.

Resources from Rodney:

Beyond the Red Ribbon training & other services: https://rodneymccoy.info/services

Listen to Daddy Podcast on YouTube

Bio:

Rodney “Rod” McCoy, Jr. brings his expertise of nearly four decades in HIV prevention and education, as well as his real-life experience as an African American gay/queer man living with HIV. An Oberlin College graduate with his Bachelors in Sociology and Black Studies, Rod has worked in a variety of capacities in the field of HIV Prevention, from Health Educator and HIV Counselor to Program Director. As an Adjunct Professor at George Mason University, Rod established the “HIV, Culture and Sexuality” course for the school’s Global and Community Health Department. Rod created a sex positivity training for public health professionals called Beyond the Red Ribbon in collaboration with Louis Shackelford of the HIV Vaccine Trials Network. He currently works at Us Helping Us in Washington, DC, as a Research Assistant. 

S4 E8 Intimacy Starts with I: Women, Self-Love, and HIV with Michelle Lopez

S4 E8 Intimacy Starts with I: Women, Self-Love, and HIV with Michelle Lopez

Michelle Lopez

CW: Mention of abuse, sexual abuse, physical abuse, incest, molestation

At 24 years old, in the early 90’s, Michelle Lopez was riding a train in New York with her newborn baby and saw an advertisement that spoke to her. It said, “If you’re a woman and you’re enduring substance abuse, homelessness, or battery, call this number.” Michelle picked up a phone and began her new life. Her and her daughter were diagnosed with HIV, and it was her mission to get clean, understand her own trauma, and help others with similar stories.

Michelle, a bisexual Caribbean woman, realized that women living with HIV continue to be ostracized for both wanting and having sex. Michelle knew she had to combat this and teach herself and others about self-love, pleasure, and intimacy. She has spent her career advocating for HIV prevention and treatment, women’s health, mental health, sexuality, and how to unlearn feelings of shame. She says, “I recognized getting clean would give me more power to fight against situations and circumstances and stand up for my rights. I had to learn what it is to love Michelle and deal with the trauma that I endured.” Michelle shares how she utilizes her experiences from childhood to the present to educate others through clinical work, research, and advocacy. Her story is one of empowerment, celebration, and making lemonade with the lemons she was given.

Download the transcript of this episode.

Resources:  

Michelle Lopez LinkedIn

CAPTC World AIDS Day Page

HIV.gov 

Bio:  

Michelle Lopez is a tireless advocate for public health among Black and Latinx communities. Over the last 30 years, Michelle has worked in HIV and AIDS prevention and health care navigation and substance use services. Michelle has served on boards of directors and advised on policy development that impacts the lives of marginalized communities. Michelle is now focusing on research designs methodology to meaningfully engages community members.

S4 E7 Dan Savage on the Magic Question “What are you into?” & Dr. Ina Park on How Providers Can Help

S4 E7 Dan Savage on the Magic Question “What are you into?” & Dr. Ina Park on How Providers Can Help

Dan Savage is a sex-advice columnist and podcaster, and Ina Park is a sex positive STI researcher, physician, and author. The two come together in this episode to discuss desire, pleasure, and how to communicate about what feels good with partners and providers. Dan delves into discovering kinks, pleasure as we age, and trying new things alone and with partners. Ina reflects on her experiences as a provider, having conversations with patients around sex and pleasure as bodies, needs, and abilities change.  

Dan says that gay people might be better at sex, “not because we’re magic…we use the 4 magic words ‘what are you into?’” Ina explains that honest communication with a partner, a physician, a sex columnist, or a therapist knocks down barriers to explore sex and discover pleasure. The two emphasize the importance of both having providers and friends (with a good sense of judgment) with whom you can discuss sex freely.  

This is our first episode of the 3-episode mini-series on pleasure. 

Download the transcript of this episode.

Resources:  

Connect with Dan: https://savage.love/, @dansavage on Instagram, and @fakedansavage on Twitter/X 

Connect with Ina: https://www.inapark.net/ and @InaParkMD on Twitter/X 

Learn how to include pleasure in sexual health history-taking from the National Coalition for Sexual Health: https://nationalcoalitionforsexualhealth.org/tools/for-healthcare-providers/video-series 

Bios:  

Dan Savage is a sex-advice columnist, podcaster and author whose graphic, pragmatic, and humorous advice has changed the cultural conversation about monogamy, gay rights, religion, and politics. “Savage Love,” Dan’s sex-advice column, was first published in 1991 and is now syndicated across the United States and Canada. He also hosts the Savage Lovecast, a weekly, call-in advice podcast that has tens of thousands of paying subscribers for premium Magnum content. Both his podcast and column can be found on his website Savage.Love. 

Ina Park MD, MS, is the author of Strange Bedfellows: Adventures in the Science, History, and Surprising Secrets of STDs. She is the Principal Investigator at the California Prevention Training Center. She is a Professor in the Department of Family and Community Medicine at the University of California San Francisco School of Medicine and a Medical Consultant in the Division of STD Prevention at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. She is a co-author of the 2021 CDC STD Treatment Guidelines, the country’s premier resource for diagnosis and treatment of sexually transmitted infections.  

S4 E6 Family Planning as Gender Affirming Care with Trans and Nonbinary Patients

S4 E6 Family Planning as Gender Affirming Care with Trans and Nonbinary Patients

Director of Gender-Affirming Care for UC Davis Health, Miles Harris, FNP-BC, advocates for the integration of gender-affirming care with primary care and family planning. He shares that “so much of gender affirming care is not about hormones” and that “it is often so easy as a health care provider to do the thing that someone needs that changes their life.” He breaks down misconceptions: hormone therapy and contraception for trans folks is relatively simple, taking testosterone and not having a period does not prevent pregnancy, and there are no contraceptive methods that are contraindicated due to testosterone use.   

He emphasizes the importance of not making assumptions about someone’s body parts or those of their partners, as well as not assuming that people are having types of sex that can result in a pregnancy. In choosing a contraceptive method, he says, “we want to remember that this person is a whole person, more than just their trans or non-binary identity.” This is the last episode in our mini-series on family planning and reproductive justice.  

Download the transcript of this episode

Resources: 

Contraception Across the Transmasculine Spectrum Article co-authored by Miles Harris 

Guidelines for the Primary and Gender-Affirming Care of Transgender and Gender Nonbinary People UCSF website 

National Transgender Health Summit Biannual conference 

National LGBTQIA+ Health Education Center Online learning from the Fenway Institute 

LGBTQ+ Healthcare Directory Created by GLMA  

Queer Doc & Plume Remote providers of gender affirming care 

CAPTC-Related Training and Resources:  

S3 E9: Abortion and Reproductive Justice Across State Lines  Podcast episode 

S2 E2: Speaking Frankly: Supporting Youths’ Choice to Parent with Dr. Aisha May Podcast episode 

Reproductive and Sexual Health Considerations for Trans and Non-Binary People Recorded webinar 

Turn on notifications to never miss an episode of Coming Together for Sexual Health. 

Follow Coming Together for Sexual Health on Instagram and Twitter

Miles Harris is a trans and non-binary identified family nurse practitioner. He serves as the founding Director of Gender-Affirming Care for UC Davis Health and as an assistant clinical professor at the UC Davis Betty Irene Moore School of Nursing. His research focuses on sexual and reproductive health needs of transgender and gender nonbinary people, including contraceptive options for transgender and gender-nonbinary people assigned female at birth. 

S4 E5 Lesser-Known Forms of Birth Control and Downplayed Side-effects: Providing Empowering Contraceptive Care  

S4 E5 Lesser-Known Forms of Birth Control and Downplayed Side-effects: Providing Empowering Contraceptive Care  

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Family doctor Jennifer Karlin, MD, PhD, and health educator Mariana Horne, join host Tammy Kremer to talk through forms of birth control that are not as well-known, including self-injectable Depo Provera, internal condoms, and the fertility awareness method. They go into side effects of birth control methods that are not always named, such as changes in mood and blood pressure. Mariana shares how she has supported clients who’ve faced coercive birth control practices in getting the care they want and how her background helps her connect with monolingual Spanish-speaking communities. Meanwhile, Jennifer shares how her family’s experience with healthcare led her to focus on empowering her patients, making the connection between how experiences in the clinic can impact people outside of the clinic: “I want them to take that feeling of autonomy, of like ‘oh, this is my body, I get to make choices about it,’ I want everybody to walk around the world knowing that and feeling that and acting that when they’re not in the clinical space.”

Read the transcript of this episode.

Resources:

Plan C Pills

M&A Hotline

UCSF New Generation Health Clinic

CAPTC Related Training and Resources:

S3 E9: Abortion and Reproductive Justice Across State Lines

Reproductive and Sexual Health Considerations for Trans and Non-Binary People

Shared Decision Making in Contraceptive Counseling

Emergency Contraception

Prevention and Management of IUD Complications

Turn on notifications to never miss an episode of Coming Together for Sexual Health.

Follow Coming Together for Sexual Health on Instagram and Twitter.

Mariana Horne is a health educator and outreach lead at UCSF New Generation Health Clinic. She is committed to addressing racial inequities and disparities in reproductive health care and is an advocate for anyone in need of reproductive care, including monolingual Spanish-speaking communities. Her expertise encompasses birth control, sexually transmitted infections, minor consent laws in California, and reproductive justice initiatives.

Jennifer Karlin, MD, PhD, is a board-certified family physician and family planning specialist whose primary care practice is anchored in caring for patients in ways that encourage their empowerment and autonomy. At UC Davis and beyond, she is committed to medical and resident education that aims to encourage physicians-in-training to approach their practices from an historical, trauma-informed, and self-reflexive perspective. Her research aims to understand how social, political, and institutional structures affect people’s experiences with diagnosis, treatment, and health care.  

S4 E4: When People Have or Are Denied Abortions: The Turnaway Study with Diana Greene Foster

S4 E4: When People Have or Are Denied Abortions: The Turnaway Study with Diana Greene Foster

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Welcome to our mini-series on Reproductive Justice and Family Planning! Diana Greene Foster, PhD, author of The Turnaway Study: Ten Years, a Thousand Women, and the Consequences of Having – or Being Denied – an Abortion, sits down with host Tammy Kremer to advocate for reproductive justice and bodily autonomy. She explains that the Turnaway Study found that, “When people are making the decision about what to do with an unexpected pregnancy and they decide on abortion, all the reasons they give us are exactly those outcomes that we see for people who are denied an abortion.” She envisions a world in which “everyone is an equal partner in sex, in childbearing, in contraception, in pregnancy decision-making.” 

Download the transcript of this episode.

Follow Diana Greene Foster on Twitter.

Resources: 

The Turnaway Study: Ten Years, a Thousand Women, and the Consequences of Having—or Being Denied—an Abortion 

Global Turnaway Study 

ANSIRH: Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Care 

Bixby Center for Global Reproductive Health  

Plan C Pills 

“Black Women’s Lived Experiences of Abortion” 

Girlx Lab

CAPTC-Related Training and Resources:  

S3 E9: Abortion and Reproductive Justice Across State Lines    

S2 E2: Speaking Frankly: Supporting Youths’ Choice to Parent with Dr. Aisha May 

Reproductive and Sexual Health Considerations for Trans and Non-Binary People 

Turn on notifications to never miss an episode of Coming Together for Sexual Health.

Follow Coming Together for Sexual Health on Instagram and Twitter.

Diana Greene Foster is a professor at the University of California, San Francisco, in the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Reproductive Sciences and a researcher at Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health. She is the principal investigator of the Turnaway Study in the United States and Nepal, a nationwide longitudinal prospective study of the health and well-being of women who seek abortion including both women who do and do not receive abortion.  

S4 E3: America’s War on Drugs and Harm Reduction Around the World with Tanagra Melgarejo Pulido

S4 E3: America’s War on Drugs and Harm Reduction Around the World with Tanagra Melgarejo Pulido

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Tanagra Melgarejo Pulido, Director of Capacity Building at the National Harm Reduction Coalition, speaks with host Tammy Kremer about the landscape of harm reduction programs and policies around the world and in the US, with a focus on the impacts of racism and colonization. She explains how harm reduction began with “communities of people who used drugs looking at each other, saying wait a minute, ‘We love each other, we care for each other. We need to build power and we need to work together.’” 

Download the transcript of this episode.

Resources:  

National Harm Reduction Coalition 

Harm Reduction International Conference

The Chicago Recovery Alliance

Positive Women’s Network

Sister Stone 

CAPTC-Related Training and Resources:  

S3 E2: Sex, Drugs, and Rock & Roll: Harm Reduction Strategies with Jen Jackson

Drugs 101 Series

Harm Reduction Resources 

Turn on notifications to never miss an episode of Coming Together for Sexual Health.

Follow Coming Together for Sexual Health on Instagram and Twitter.

Tanagra Melgarejo Pulido was born and raised in Puerto Rico and is a daughter of immigrants from Mexico and Cuba. She leads the National Harm Reduction Coalition’s capacity, building, and technical assistance efforts across the United States and its territories. 

S4 E2: Harm Reduction by Heart with Braunz Courtney

S4 E2: Harm Reduction by Heart with Braunz Courtney

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CW: Substance Abuse

Braunz Courtney speaks with host Tammy Kremer about how he practiced strategies of harm reduction at the age of 11 before he knew what the term meant. He went from dancing shirtless to raise awareness of the prevalence of HIV/AIDS in queer Black communities to serving as the Executive Director of the HIV Education Prevention Project of Alameda County. He touches upon the importance of organizations that understand the lived experiences of the populations they serve.  

Download the transcript of this episode.

Follow HEPPAC on Instagram and Twitter

Resources: 

National Harm Reduction Coalition 

Cal-Pep 

Oakland LGBTQ Center 

CAPTC-Related Training and Resources: 

Syringe Services Programs Workshop

Breakout Session 6: Mobile Harm Reduction, Street Medicine as a Medical Home  

Turn on notifications to never miss an episode of Coming Together for Sexual Health.

Follow Coming Together for Sexual Health on Instagram and Twitter.

Braunz Courtney is the Executive Director of the HIV Education Prevention Project of Alameda County. He serves PWUDs, the unhoused homeless, LGBTQ+, youth, and the recently released/reentry of the Alameda, Contra Costa, and Solano Counties. He creates, implements, and markets culturally appropriate programs that provide services in non-clinical settings to BIPOC communities throughout Northern California East Bay with a goal of having long-lasting public health impacts.  

S4 E1: Narcan Queen Kochina Rude on Drag and Harm Reduction

S4 E1: Narcan Queen Kochina Rude on Drag and Harm Reduction

CW: Opioid Overdose, Molestation 

Welcome to our mini-series on Harm Reduction! Host Tammy Kremer sits down with drag queen Kochina Rude to share how she uses her performances to educate the LGBTQ+ community about Naloxone administration, safer partying, and overdose prevention. At her show “Princess,” cohosted with Lisa Frankenstien, Kochina Rude has provided training and 2,000+ doses of Narcan in San Francisco’s South of Market neighborhood since 2021. 

Download the transcript of this episode.

Follow Kochina Rude on InstagramTwitter, and TikTok. 

Resources: 

National Harm Reduction Coalition 

Remedy Alliance For The People 

NEXT Distro 

DanceSafe 

CAPTC-Related Training and Resources: 

Unconditional Positive Regard–Intersectionality of Harm Reduction & Spirituality 

Syringe Service Program Community of Practice 

Drugs 101 

Turn on notifications to never miss an episode of Coming Together for Sexual Health.

Follow Coming Together for Sexual Health on Instagram and Twitter.

Kochina Rude is a Bay Area-based drag queen, harm reduction advocate, and public health worker. She co-hosts the drag show “Princess” with Lisa Frankenstein at SF Oasis, where she established a naloxone distribution and overdose prevention education project for LGBT+ nightlife.

S3 E14: Monkeypox: Where are We Now? with Dr. Peter Chin-Hong

S3 E14: Monkeypox: Where are We Now? with Dr. Peter Chin-Hong

Host Tammy Kremer chats with UCSF Infectious Disease Specialist Dr. Peter Chin-Hong about the current state of the Mpox outbreak: how it reflects contemporary health inequities, how stigma can be a barrier to people accessing treatment, and how lessons learned from past public health crises shaped the clinical and community response. Dr. Chin-Hong speaks about his experience caring for Mpox patients over the course of the outbreak, and how the stigma surrounding the virus has discouraged individuals from seeking out the necessary care, creating invisible populations of patients who are disconnected from diagnosis and treatment. Finally, he breaks down the social and behavioral interventions that have been effective in slowing the spread of the virus over the past months. They explore the role of public health education and messaging in the Mpox outbreak and how Dr. Chin-Hong anticipates the outbreak may proceed. 

Read the transcript of the episode here.

CAPTC-Related Training and Resources: 

S3 E8: Monkeypox in California: A Personal Story and Public Health Perspective 

S3 E3: Monkeypox, What’s the Hype?

CAPTC Monkeypox FAQ’s

CDC Monkeypox Resource Center 

Turn on notifications to never miss an episode of Coming Together for Sexual Health.

Follow Coming Together for Sexual Health on Instagram and Twitter.

Peter Chin-Hong, MD, is a professor of medicine and associate dean at UCSF. He specializes in treating infectious diseases, especially in immunosuppressed patients such as recipients of organ and stem cell transplants and HIV-positive recipients of organ transplants. He is regularly featured in the media discussing COVID-19 and Mpox. 

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