S3 Ep7: Breaking Down STI Stigma with Dr. Ina Park & Courtney Brame

CW: Suicide, Suicidal Ideation

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.

Courtney says that “sexual health is mental health.” He hopes to expand the mental health resources available to those living with herpes and use the collective stories of the SPFPP community to inform health care practices, especially the delivery of an HSV diagnosis. Courtney engages those living with a positive diagnosis and their allies to transform the stigma that often works to silence them.

Download the transcript of this episode.

Have any questions, concerns, or love letters? Send us a message on Instagram @comingtogetherpod or email us at comingtogetherpod@ucsf.edu. Don’t forget to leave us a review on Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Resources:

Donate to Something Positive for Positive People
SPFPP website
SPFPP podcast
HSV Survey results mentioned
Dr. Ina Park’s Instagram, twitter, and website
Strange Bedfellows by Dr. Park
Penny for your thoughts campaign

Courtney Brame (he/him) is the founder of Something Positive for Positive People, a 501c3 nonprofit organization highlighting the intersections of sexual health and mental health stigma. After discovering that many people diagnosed with herpes struggled with suicide ideation, Brame decided to interview those living with herpes and share their stories with other folks navigating herpes stigma. Something Positive for Positive People also works to give health care professionals tools they can use to provide anti-stigmatizing, identity validating, sex-positive health care. Courtney also hosts a podcast, called Something Positive for Positive People, where you can hear these stories and experiences directly.

S3 E6: Dante King on Anti-Blackness and The 400-Year Holocaust

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Content warning: racism, genocide, violence

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. Download the transcript of this episode.

Resources mentioned:

The 400 Year Holocaust: 12 Week Series and more courses from Dante.
Equal Justice Initiative
Dante’s reading list

Books mentioned:

The 400-Year Holocaust: White America’s Legal, Psychopathic, and Sociopathic Black Genocide and the Revolt Against Critical Race Theory by Dante King
The Shaping of Black America by Lerone Bennett Jr.
Black Reconstruction in America by W.E.B. Dubois
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglas by Frederick Douglas
Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome: America’s Legacy of Enduring Injury and Healing by Dr. Joy Degruy Leary
The Color of Law by Richard Rothstein
Not in My Neighborhood: How Bigotry Shaped a Great American City by Antero Pietila

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About Dante:

Dante King is the author of the new book The 400-Year Holocaust: White America’s Legal, Psychopathic, and Sociopathic Black Genocide and the Revolt Against Critical Race Theory; winner of the Bookfest Award. Dante also teaches a course at the UCSF School of Medicine called Understanding the Roots of Racism and Bias: Anti-blackness and Its Links to Whiteness, White Racism, Privilege, and Power. Dante was the previous Deputy Director for the San Francisco California Department of Public Health Office of Health Equity, where he led the development and implementation of workforce and health equity policies and programs. You can find out more about Dante by going to www.danteking.com and connecting via Twitter @danteking2020.

S3 Ep5: Trauma-Informed Pregnancy Care with Becca Schwartz, LCSW

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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. We’d like to note that this episode contains occasional gendered language when talking about pregnant people. We recognize that not all pregnant people identify as women. Download the transcript of this episode.

Resources from Becca and the CAPTC:

Team Lily
The HIVE Clinic
Ana Delgado, CNM, MS, episode from season 1
Homeless Prenatal Program
San Francisco’s Nurse Home Visiting Programs
Introduction to trauma-informed care for Disease Intervention Specialists, from the CAPTC
Stop the Hidden Epidemic: Five Steps to Prevent and Treat HIV, HCV, and STDs Among People Experiencing Homelessness, from the CAPTC

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Becca Schwartz has been working as a clinical social worker at San Francisco General Hospital since 2004, in a joint position with the HIV Division and the Department of OB/Gyn. In 2018 she helped to launch Team Lily, a low-barrier pregnancy care clinic for people experiencing barriers such as homelessness, substance use disorders, mental illness, and intimate partner violence. As the social worker for HIVE Clinic and Team Lily, she provides complex care coordination, psycho-social support, risk reduction counseling, and linkage to mental health and substance use treatment to women living with HIV, or at risk for HIV, in and around pregnancy. For the past 15 years, Becca has provided these clinical services as well as practical help accessing housing and homeless services, healthcare, financial and nutritional benefits to pregnant women and their families. Becca is trained in Infant-Parent psychotherapy and brings this clinical lens to her work with families.

S3 Ep4 PrEP Supports: Reflections on the Campaign

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We speak with Terrance Wilder and Nikole Trainor, two people who were intimately involved in PrEP Supports, a campaign launched by the San Francisco Department of Public Health in 2018. PrEP Supports was a community-engaged campaign that specifically focused on PrEP access and education in Black communities in San Francisco.

Download the transcript of this episode.

Resources from Terrance, Nikole, and the CAPTC:

See images and video from the PrEP Supports campaign at Ask About PrEP or by texting “Ask PrEP” to 21201
510 Media
Instituto Familiar de la Raza and Sí a la Vida
Get connected to Have Good Sex on Instagram and their website
Get free at-home testing kits from takemehome.org
Learn more about San Francisco’s Getting to Zero Campaign
PrEP and PEP self-paced online learning opportunities from the CAPTC
PrEP printable pocket guide for providers
View the CAPTC’s HIV and PrEP resources

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Terrance Wilder is an Equity Training Coordinator at the San Francisco AIDS Foundation where he’s worked for 5 years. In addition to putting in work at SFAF, Terrance is an avid basketball player, hiker, and comedy fan.

Nikole Trainor currently works full-time for the San Francisco Department of Public Health (SFDPH) as the Getting to Zero Program Coordinator/Contract Manager, while also teaching part-time at SJSU in the School of Public Health. Nikole has worked for SFDPH in the STD Prevention and Control Branch for the past 13 years. She is responsible for spearheading several innovative initiatives which included the launch of the San Francisco PrEP Supports Campaign (2019), launch of Have Good Sex Campaign (2020), implementation of the first Pharmacist Delivered One-Stop PrEP Program at Mission Wellness Pharmacy in San Francisco CA (2018-present), and the implementation of the first official lab-based HIV/STI/HCV home-testing program (2021). For the past 15 years, Nikole has been dedicated to improving quality of life for all communities of color and speaking boldly about inequities that negatively impact the communities in which she serves.

S3 Ep3: Monkeypox, What’s The Hype?

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This special episode features Dr. Ina Park discussing monkeypox: what it is, what’s the hype, and how worried (hint: not very) she is about the spread.

Download the transcript of the episode here.

Follow Dr. Ina Park on Instagram and Twitter.

Resources:

CDC

Strange Bedfellows: Adventures in the Science, History, and Surprising Secrets of STDs.

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Dr. Ina Park, MS, is the medical director 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 and a medical consultant in the Division of STD Prevention at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

S3 Ep2: Sex, Drugs, and Rock & Roll: Harm Reduction Strategies with Jen Jackson

Jen Jackson, Disease Intervention Specialist and Harm Reductionist, walks us through the history of harm reduction, the principles that guide the movement, and gives us some personal examples of disease intervention and harm reduction values in action. Listen in to learn how theories of harm reduction apply in myriad settings, and how a foundation in these theories is essential to providing effective sexual healthcare.

Download the transcript for this episode.

Resources from Jen Jackson:

Resources From the CAPTC:

Drugs 101 Training Series from the CAPTC and National Harm Reduction Coalition
Harm reduction resources from the CAPTC
Virtual Syringe Services Workshop from the CAPTC

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Follow Coming Together for Sexual Health on Instagram and Twitter.

S3 Ep1: Disability and Sexual Health

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CW: Ableism

Download the transcript of this episode.

Follow Andrew Gurza on Instagram.

Resources:

Disability After Dark

Hot, Wet, and Shaking: How I Learned to Talk about Sex by Kaleigh Trace

Purchase or financially support The Joystick: The World’s First Accessible Sex Toy by Get Bump’n

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

Follow Coming Together for Sexual Health on Instagram and Twitter.

Andrew Gurza is an award-winning Disability Awareness Consultant and the Chief Disability Officer and Co-founder ofBump’n, a sex toy company for and by disabled people. Their work has been featured on BBC, CBC, Daily Xtra, Gay Times UK, Huffington Post, The Advocate, Everyday Feminism, Mashable, Out.com, and several anthologies. They were the subject of an award-winning National Film Board of Canada Documentary “Picture This.” Andrew has guested on a number of podcasts including Dan Savage’s Savage Love and Cameron Esposito’s Queery. They have spoken all over the world on sex, disability and what it means to be a Queer Cripple. They are also the host of Disability After Dark: The Podcast Shining a Bright Light on Disability Stories which won a Canadian Podcast Award in 2021, a Queerty Award, and was chosen as an Honoree at the 2020 Webby Awards. The show is available on all platforms. Andrew is also the creator of the viral hashtag #DisabledPeopleAreHot.

S2 Speaking Frankly Bonus Episode! Asking for a Friend w/ Dr Rosalyn Plotzker

Speaking Frankly Bonus Episode! Asking for a Friend w/ Dr Rosalyn Plotzker

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.

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S2 Ep7 Speaking Frankly: Dr. Paul Nash on the intersections of aging, discrimination, and sexual health Pt 2

We continue our conversation with Dr. Paul Nash, Associate Professor in Gerontology at USC.

In Part 2 of this discussion about ageism, host Duran Rutledge and Paul dive into the harmful stigma surrounding sex and aging, particularly for people at the intersections of various identities and life experiences.

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S2 Ep6 Speaking Frankly: Dr. Paul Nash on the intersections of aging, discrimination, and sexual health Pt 1

In this episode, we talk with Dr. Paul Nash, Associate Professor in Gerontology at USC. His research spans over a decade and focuses on ageism, discrimination, sexual health, and the built environment.

He partners with several non-profit organizations on his research into HIV and aging as well as ageism and intergenerational communication. 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.

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