Doing One Thing Well: Finding and Treating All HIV Cases in a Community

The goal of the "Do One Thing" program, launched last June in Philadelphia, is to assure that  everyone in a single neighborhood has been tested for HIV and hepatitis C, and to route everyone who tests positive to free HIV treatment. The program has accomplished this by using every known strategy for outreach, from knocking on doors to involving local clery and businesses, to social media and public relations campaigns. In this podcast, hear Amy Nunn ScD describe the strategy and the unexpected outcomes of the program.

Dr. Nunn is assistant professor of medicine in the infectious diseases division at Brown University Medical School.

The questions:

First, please tell us what Do One Thing is.

How did you choose this community?

Do you have plans to try to expand this type of project nationally?

Do you have any outcomes that you can share?

Key quotations:

"People don't just come out of the woodwork to test for HIV for the first time. You really have to stimulate demand for testing."

 "Some of the most heavily impacted communities in the United States are the ones that have the fewest number of health services. What we were really trying to do was respond to unmet needs." 

"This is the first campaign of its kind in the country that uses almost all of our existing HIV prevention interventions in an effort to respond to unmet testing and treatment."

 "We haven't routinely screened for hepatitis in the way that we have for HIV and other chronic illnesses... Our project will yield some important insights about how big of an impact each of these illnesses have."