Brunch, Margaritas And Good Advice: How Peer Support Helps Those Living With HIV
When asked to start a support group for gay black men living with HIV, or human immunodeficiency virus, Larry Scott-Walker said no thanks. His friend raised the question in 2015, and by that point, the 35-year-old HIV program manager had accumulated over a decade's worth of experience working in the HIV field, first in Baltimore and then in Atlanta, often leading such support groups.
"They were just, like, really sad," he explains. People would come to the groups to unpack each week's traumas. There was healing in the process, says Scott-Walker, but the groups rarely moved forward from it. The most recent group had dissolved due to lack of interest, including his own.
Scott-Walker was himself living with HIV, but he hadn't disclosed his status widely. At around the same time the group fell apart, he learned a family member was ill with complications of HIV infection. Something clicked; if he had been more open about his diagnosis, he thought, maybe his relative would have been encouraged to take her medications.
He decided he'd run the support group — but this time, it would be different. Rather than arranging for members to sit quietly in a circle, Scott-Walker and his friends planned a different kind of event. "We called it a 'BYOB meetup,'" he says. Participants met for brunch.
That first event, which drew 45 black gay men living with HIV — one who brought a Margaritaville drink blender — grew into Transforming HIV Resentment Into Victories Everlasting Support Services, or , a peer support network that now has more living with HIV are virally suppressed, indicating they have no risk of transmitting the virus. Of the 300-odd Thrive SS members who responded to a 2018 engagement survey, 92% reported viral suppression.
