Tammy Kremer, MA

Public Health Communications Manager

Tammy Kremer, MA, is a multimedia producer and communicator. In addition to managing CAPTC’s communications platforms, she runs a communications internship for undergraduate students. She is the host and producer of Coming Together for Sexual Health, CAPTC’s podcast, and produces video for the center. She is a co-creator and facilitator of an integrative health program developed by UCSF and the Shanti Project.

Prior to joining the CAPTC, she was the communications specialist at the UCSF Osher Center for Integrative Medicine and a multimedia specialist at Weill Cornell Medicine’s Office of External Affairs. Tammy completed the Fulbright in Trinidad and Tobago in which she focused on birth stories, with an emphasis on home birth (read, watch, engage). Her MA is from New York University in Arts and Peacebuilding and her BA is from UC Berkeley in Gender and Dance.

Check out Tammy’s interview with communications interns Emma and Clara as she discusses navigating power, privilege, and positionality on the Coming Together for Sexual Health podcast within her leadership role. Learn more about Tammy and gain a deeper understanding of the creative process and overall facilitation of the podcast.

Catalina Macdonald, MEd.

Education Technology Manager

Catalina Macdonald is an erstwhile science educator and marine biology enthusiast who is passionate about science and public health communication. Catalina works on expanding the CAPTC’s reach through developing and sharing online learning materials.

Catalina enjoys highlighting the great work of colleagues by adapting our website to meet the changing needs of all the CAPTC’s programs.

Stacy Vogan, MPH, CHES

CAPTC Evaluation Manager

Stacy Vogan has more than 25 years of national and international experience in public health focusing on HIV and STD prevention and care, program development and implementation, evaluation design and analysis, and strategic planning. She currently leads the evaluation of the CAPTC’s federal, local, and global funded initiatives to ensure its services are responding to key community needs, stakeholder priorities, and health outcome data. Additionally, Stacy has developed and delivered numerous curricula and professional trainings on topics such as program monitoring and evaluation, transformative learning and group development, bridging gaps between research and practice, program planning, and advanced facilitation.

Stacy has provided consulting to community-based organizations and international agencies and served as co-chair on the National Network of Prevention Training Centers Evaluation Committee. She has taught online graduate-level courses at San Jose State University and presented at multiple national and international conferences. She strongly believes in developing sustainable practices and skills that build upon the strengths inherent in an individual, agency, and/or community. Stacy is committed to bringing community knowledge and insight to the forefront of public health planning. This results in effective and sustainable implementation strategies, useful community practices informed by research, and relationships that collaboratively address disparities and promote health equity.

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

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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.

S3 E13: Centering Pleasure, Problems, and Pride in Sexual Health Care with Jenn Rogers and Bryce Furness

S3 E13: Centering Pleasure, Problems, and Pride in Sexual Health Care

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Host Tammy Kremer interviews Jenn Rogers, Director of the National Coalition for Sexual Health (NCSH), and Bryce Furness, MD, CDC Epidemiologist, about their work developing a toolkit for primary care providers to use in order to center sexual pleasure, problems, and pride as a part of all wellness visits. The CDC encourages taking sexual history by asking about 5 Ps: Partners, Practices, Past STI History, Protection From STIs, and Pregnancy Intention. The National Coalition for Sexual Health recently released a video series called “A New Approach to Sexual History Taking,” along with a set of new questions for providers to ask patients in all wellness visits that add a 6th P: Pleasure, Pride, and Problems.

Jenn and Bryce discuss the 6th P, which re-centers patients’ needs, enjoyment of their sexual lives, and social stigma attached to sex. As Jenn elaborates, “A satisfying pleasurable sex life is really a key element to sexual health and well-being for most people. So our sexual history taking questions really should reflect that.” Bryce uses his specialized experiences providing sexual health care to LGBTQ+ populations to argue that we must recognize health disparities and address stigma around sexual health. Together, they discuss the creation of a freely accessible toolkit for all providers to use. They recognize that the current method of sexual history taking doesn’t incorporate enough discussion of issues such as gender identity, sexuality, shame, and stigma, and how these can affect sexual activity and sexual health.

Read the transcript of the episode here.

Resources:

National Coalition for Sexual Health

NCSH Membership Application

NCSH Health Care Action Group, Communications Actions Group, Policy Action Group

NCSH 6th P Video Series

NCSH Medical Provider’s Guide

NCSH Sexual Health History Questions

CDC guide to taking a sexual history

CDC’s Rachel Kucher et al. , “Sexual History Taking in Clinical Settings: A Narrative Review”

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

Follow Coming Together for Sexual Health on Instagram and Twitter.

Jennifer Rogers, MPH, is the co-director of the National Coalition for Sexual Health (NCSH), a robust Coalition of over 200 members where she works collaboratively to promote high-quality sexual health information and health services. She also leads the Coalition’s Health Care Action Group to develop evidence-based and practical provider tools and materials.

Bryce Furness, MD, MPH, is a Medical Epidemiologist with the CDC’s Division of STD Prevention. He has been embedded within the Washington, DC Department of Health since 2002. Highlights of his tenure include establishing a transgender health clinic, leading gay men’s health & wellness clinics, and improving the PrEP Clinic. He has recently published several articles on transforming primary care for LGBT people.

S3 E12: Four Decades of Sexual Health: History of the CAPTC

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Director of the CAPTC Dana Cropper sits down with Gail Bolan, MD, and Alice Gandelman to discuss the founding of the CAPTC and its work in supporting sexual healthcare providers over the last 33 years. We learn about the forces that shaped the sexual healthcare field. Our guests unpack how the CAPTC developed alongside the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the late 1980s, the surprising relationship between HIV work and STI response, strategies to meet sexual healthcare needs both within and outside of sexual health clinics, and the ever-present need for greater training for providers around testing and treatment of STIs. We learn about how behavioral interventions were centered in response to the HIV/AIDS epidemic, and the importance of centering social determinants of health and larger structural forces in prevention and treatment efforts. They also discuss their hopes for opening up discussions about sexual health and de-stigmatizing the topic in the greater community.

Read the transcript of the episode here.

Resources:

HHS/Viral Hepatitis Action Plan

Ending the HIV Epidemic in the US (EHE)

Provision of Quality of STD Services (CDC) 2020

San Francisco City Clinic

Health HIV

National Coalition for Sexual Health

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

Follow Coming Together for Sexual Health on Instagram and Twitter.

Gail Bolan, MD, was the Director of the Division of STD Prevention at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) from 2011 through 2020. Prior to joining CDC, she directed the California Prevention Training Center for 23 years. She served as the Chief of the STD Control Branch at the California Department of Public Health and the Director of the San Francisco City and County STD Prevention and Control Program from 1997 to 2011 as well as Medical Director of the San Francisco City Clinic from 1987 to 1997. 

Alice Gandelman was the Director of the CAPTC from 1994 through 2021. She oversaw growth and development of CAPTC in numerous training and capacity-building programs in STD, HIV, sexual, and reproductive health.

S3 E11: See All of Me: Transgender Health and Medical Mistrust with Zami Hyemingway & Dr. Tatyana Moaton

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CW: Transphobia, Racism

Zami Hyemingway and Dr. Tatyana Moaton sit down with Tammy to discuss their personal and professional experiences with medical care for transgender folks and medical mistreatment. Together, they reflect on the need for medical providers to become responsive to transgender people’s individual needs and advocate for them in a setting that has often been unsafe for them. Transgender folks need medical providers who will take risks and be true allies. Healthcare providers must rethink care amidst a system in which they occupy positions of power.

Our guests also argue for de-coupling all healthcare from any sort of police or criminal systems, emphasizing the impact this has on people with marginalized identities. Their discussion dives into the colonial roots of the gender binary and the transgender identity category, and how these constructs lead to a misunderstanding of what it means to be transgender and navigate trans healthcare. https://californiaptc.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/CT4SH-SeeAllOfMe-FinalV2.pdf

Last March, Zami Hyemingway co-organized the conference on “See All of Me: The Intersections of Medical Mis/Distrust and its Impact on Transgender Health, HIV Care and Prevention” with Dr. Tatyana Moaton as a plenary speaker.

Download the transcript for the episode here.

Resources:

“See All of Me: The Intersections of Medical Mis/Distrust and its Impact on Transgender Health, HIV Care and Prevention”

Zami Hyemingway

Tatyana Moaton

CBA Resources https://californiaptc.com/programs/capacity-building-assistance/

U.S. Trans Survey: New survey, open to trans people at any stage, launching 10/19/22 https://www.ustranssurvey.org/

STD Expert Hour: This training focuses on the sexual health needs of transgender and gender non-conforming people. https://californiaptc.com/training/std-expert-hour-transgender-sexual-health-what-you-should-know/

Higher Education Scholarship Opportunities for LGBTQ+ students listed at EduMed, Peterson’s, GoGrad

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

Follow Coming Together for Sexual Health on Instagram and Twitter.

Zami Hyemingway is the Capacity Building Assistance Gender-Affirming Project Manager at the Denver Prevention Training Center where he leads a team of identity consultants that provide technical assistance to clinics, health departments, and community-based organizations. Zami has over 10 years of experience in developing and implementing health behavior and health promotion programs. He also hosts personal wellness workshops via his organization, Spiritus Wellness.

Dr. Tatyana Moaton is the CEO and Principal Consultant for Envision Consulting, one of the first black trans-led consulting firms in the country. She is also a senior capacity-building specialist with San Francisco Community Health Center. Tatyana is a veteran of the U.S. Armed Forces, serving honorably as an intelligence officer in the US Army. She recently obtained her Doctorate of Philosophy In Management Science. She has worked with the ACLU, LAMBDA Legal, U.S. Center for Disease Control, AIDS United, NMAC, Gilead, Merck, Elton John AIDS Foundation, and Black AIDS Institute.

S3 E10: How Identity, Trauma, and Relationship Structure Affect Pleasure and Consent with Psychotherapist Sam Kendakur

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CW: Sexual Trauma

Psychotherapist Sam Kendakur talks with Tammy about the intersections of sexual health and mental health. Listen in for nuanced conversations about the gray areas and messiness of consent; how to piece apart our own understandings of sexual pleasure, desire, and attraction; the impacts of stigma on sexual and gender identity and those who choose non-monogamous relationship styles. We learn about the unexpected impacts healthcare providers can have on the wellbeing of folks with marginalized sexual, gender, and racial identities, especially when there are stark differences between the provider and client’s lived experiences.

Download the transcript for this episode here.

Resources:

Sam Kendakur’s website
Reading Guide from Shrimp Teeth: The Best Polyamory, Sex, and Queer Books
The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk
Polysecure: Attachment, Trauma and Consensual Nonmonogamy by Jessica Fern
Higher Education Scholarship Opportunities for LGBTQ+ students listed at Edumed, Petersons, and gograd

Sam Kendakur has worked in the mental health field for the past 12 years in a variety of settings across college campuses, inpatient psychiatric hospitals, alternative peer support networks, clinics, institutes, and currently private clinical practice. He’s invested in creating spaces that make healing accessible and relevant to people from different realms of experience, especially those that inhabit marginalized spaces. The social structure and health care system have failed so many, and he tries to address and combat these shortcomings through a commitment to client-centered anti-oppression practices that honor that suffering is most often nested within inequitable and unjust systems and their consequences rather than individual lack. He specializes in working with the LGBTQIA community, BDSM and kink, race and ethnicity, trauma, and alternative relationship styles.

S3 Ep9: Abortion and Reproductive Justice Across State Lines

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In this episode, Dr. Fleming sits down with host Tammy to discuss what she sees as providers’ role in supporting patients, now that Roe v. Wade has been overturned. They review the multitude of situations in which a pregnancy is not optimal and how abortion stigma is one of the biggest barriers to medically safe abortion. At the core of her work, Dr. Fleming seeks to ensure her patients are empowered and find joy in their own reproductive health decisions.

Download the transcript of this episode.

Follow Dr. Mai Fleming on Twitter.

Resources:

CAPTC-Related Training and Resources:

S3 E5: Trauma-Informed Pregnancy Care with Becca Schwartz, LCSW

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

Follow Coming Together for Sexual Health on Instagram and Twitter.

Dr. Mai Fleming has a breadth of experience working in primary care settings and providing reproductive health services across the gender spectrum. Her work includes telemedicine abortion services via Hey Jane. As a family doctor, she helps people consider reproductive health and family planning within the broader context of their lives. In taking an expansive view of what reproductive care encompasses—including fertility counseling, abortion, and gender-affirming hormone therapy—Dr. Fleming works to help her patients meet their goals.

S3 Ep8: Mpox in California: A Personal Story and Public Health Perspective

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Stephan Ferris, a Bay Area activist lawyer, received one of the first 40 reported diagnoses of mpox (formerly known as monkeypox) after attending a Pride celebration in San Francisco, California. Here, Ferris sits down with host, Tammy Kremer, and Dr. Akanksha Vaidya, a clinical fellow responding to the current health crisis, to share his experience and discuss the need for improving treatment accessibility and provider education concerning a mpox diagnosis.

This is a follow-up on an episode we put out on June 1st of this year with Dr. Ina Park at a very different stage of the spread of mpox. With the US and the World Health Organization declaring this a public health emergency, Ferris and Dr. Vaidya use their respective lenses to reflect on representation of this disease in the media, transmission, and the stigma associated with those who receive a diagnosis. As commercial labs begin to provide greater testing capacity, the group discusses improving messaging about limited vaccine supply and other treatment options for groups most vulnerable and individuals experiencing moderate symptoms.

Download the transcript of this episode.

Resources Mentioned:

Stephan Ferris’s Website and Reading is Fundemental Podcast
CDPH About Monkeypox and California Data
CDPH Monkeypox Clinical Assist Evaluation Tool
CDC Monitor Monkeypox Exposure
CDC Monkeypox Updates and Topics
Also be sure to check out Dr. Justin Lehmiller’s great monkeypox explainer, too!

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

Follow Coming Together for Sexual Health on Instagram and Twitter.

Stephan Ferris is an openly queer and activist lawyer who focuses on entertainment law with an emphasis on uplifting LGBTQ+ voices. Stephan is also the producer and co-host of the entertainment law podcast Reading is Fundamental. He volunteers with various Bay Area LGBTQI+ organizations and is on the board of directors for Bay Area Lawyers for Individual Freedom (“BALIF”), a community of LGBTQI+ legal professionals.

Dr. Akanksha Vaidya is a clinical fellow trained in internal medicine and infectious diseases at the California Prevention Training Center. She completed her medical degree at Cornell University and her residency in Internal Medicine at Emory University in Atlanta. She came to UCSF in July 2020 for her Infectious Diseases Fellowship. Her research and professional interests include improving health equity and access to care for people with STIs and HIV.