“Sometimes your authenticity is your activism. Being yourself can be a radical act.”
—Elaine Welteroth
author of More Than Enough: Claiming Space for
Who You Are (No Matter What They Say)
“I began to foreclose on my life… I couldn’t see past my 40th birthday.”
In a PEP presentation, an ER nurse in the audience said patients at her clinic are given a few days worth of prevention medication and some fail to follow up with a doctor to obtain the rest of the 28-day regimen, and she wondered why. “I can answer that,” said a young black man in the audience, Arturo Hill of the NovaSalud community-based health organization in Falls Church, Virginia. “I had a friend who went to the ER recently for PEP. The nurses asked him demeaning questions because he’s gay. He couldn’t believe it. Many providers are not sensitive to the queer experience, so people may think it’s going to be the same at the doctor’s office.”