Coming Together for Sexual Health

Courtney Brame, the founder of Something Positive for Positive People (SPFPP), sits down with guest-host Dr. Ina Park to discuss the ongoing need to foster spaces that destigmatize STI diagnoses. In the ninth year of his herpes (HSV-2) diagnosis, Courtney speaks on navigating life with the virus and what drove him to connect with people struggling with mental health issues as a result of their herpes status. What started as informally providing solidarity to those living with herpes, quickly became a podcast and platform for sharing the experiences of those battling societal stigma and self-shaming, creating pathways to disclosing their status and tools that can make waiting for a vaccine more manageable.

Dante King, author of The 400-year Holocaust: White America’s Legal, Psychopathic, and Sociopathic Black Genocide – and the Revolt Against Critical Race Theory, sits down with guest host Duran Rutledge (capacity building and technical assistance trainer at CAPTC) to reflect on what it means to be a Black person in a country where the colonial legacy of anti-Blackness and conceptions of whiteness and white supremacy have engrained racism into our legal structures, healthcare system, and more.

King offers concrete examples of how these intergenerational and ongoing traumas show up, and examines the roles of empathy, re-education, and narrative in promoting transformation. This conversation illuminates the structures that reinforce America’s blatant anti-Blackness that need to be seen, but so often are not.

Becca Schwartz, LCSW,speaks about Team Lily, a pregnancy clinic for people experiencing significant barriers to care located at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital. We focus on trauma-informed care: how past trauma can show up for patients in the medical setting, ways providers can practice trauma-informed care, and how these issues present and are addressed in San Francisco and specifically at the Team Lily clinic. Note: this episode contains occasional gendered language when talking about pregnant people. We recognize that not all pregnant people identify as women.

Follow Ina on Instagram and Twitter @inaparkmd for timely (and often entertaining) updates on sexual health. Check out Dr. Park’s book, Strange Bedfellows: Adventures in the Science, History, and Surprising Secrets of STDs.

We speak with Dr. Rosalyn Plotzker about her work with UCSF’s ANCRE Center, the world’s first clinic devoted to anal cancer prevention. Anal cancer incidence is on the rise despite it being associated with HPV, a highly preventable (and extremely common!) virus.

Roz takes us through her work with the clinic, anal cancer screening and risk factors, and debunks many of the stereotypes and stigmas surrounding anal cancer and its causes.

Want to chat with Roz directly? Email her: Rosalyn.Plotzker@ucsf.edu

If you work in sexual health, you have probably had the experience of becoming the “sexpert” for your friends and family.

In this special episode we have gathered some (but by no means all!) of the questions Dr. Rosalyn Plotzker has received from her various circles to try and demystify at least some of these aspects of sexual health.

Paul currently serves as a Commissioner on the Los Angeles County Commission on HIV, and he consults with the World Health Organization on ageism. He is active in teaching and recently published the book, Critical Questions for Ageing Societies.

He discusses how capitalism reinforces racism, the creation of anti-blackness through policy, and the systems and structures that have led to white supremacist ideology.

Dr. Monica Gandhi is an infectious disease physician and professor of medicine at UCSF, and the Medical Director of the Ward 86 clinic focused on HIV. She has become a trusted expert on COVID-19.

She talks with us about the vaccines already being used in the US, and the Johnson & Johnson vaccine that was submitted to the FDA for Emergency Use Authorization.

She explains the implications for the one-dose J & J vaccine and when we may finally get back to a little bit of normalcy.

Congenital syphilis is up 900% in California since 2012. UC San Francisco’s Dr. Rosalyn Plotzker speaks with us about CS prevention and treatment and about the complex issues contributing to the spike, like systemic racism.

Dr. George Rutherford, Professor of Epidemiology at UC San Francisco, talks with us about COVID-19, the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines and why anti-microbial resistance is the next public health threat.

Lidia Carlton, Director of Community Education at Planned Parenthood Pasadena and San Gabriel Valley, speaks with us about the California Healthy Youth Act, which mandates more robust and inclusive sex ed in California. She tells us about the positive results it’s yielded, but why some parents are still concerned about the new curriculum.

Wanda Jackson, DISTC Trainer/Technical Assistance Specialist, has more than 30 years’ experience in the field of disease investigation and contact tracing. In this episode, she gives us a detailed look at the contact tracing process and explains why compassion, patience, and empathy are so valuable as we face this public health crisis.