Health organization celebrates Pride with support, testing and treatment

By Summer Knowles

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    ORLANDO, Florida (WESH) — As WESH 2 celebrates Pride Month, we’re putting a focus on the community’s achievements and its needs.

Like many minority communities, health care isn’t the priority it maybe should be. But an Orlando, not-for-profit health organization is making sure testing, treatment and support are at the forefront of people’s minds.

“Our organization is Hope & Help, and our mission is to serve the community through prevention, education, testing and treatment of diseases — whether it’s HIV, Hep C, syphilis,” said Ryan Seunarine, Hope & Help’s senior operations manager.

“Central Florida is one of the highest endemic areas of newly infected people with HIV. Even though we have come so far, with education and with treatment, we’re still seeing such a high infectious rate,” Seunarine said.

Hope & Help’s team is committed to changing that through outreach and education, testing, advocacy and access to treatment.

“I do it because my generation got decimated by HIV,” said Thomas Bland, a peer educator at Hope & Help.

Bland was diagnosed with HIV in 1989.

“Nobody knew what it was, and then everybody that had it within three to six months was dead,” Bland said.

But here he is 35 years later, and he credits a lot of things — including support he found at Hope & Help — much like his colleague Cicily Martin. Martin was diagnosed at 15 after undergoing routine testing to join job corp.

Verbatim, the doctor told her, “Do you want to stay here and get your education? Or do you want to go home and die?”

She ended up going home, and the only place she was able to find help was at Hope & Help.

“My ground zero was Hope & Help and Seminole County Health Department, which took me in and gave me care and gave me medication when nobody else would,” Martin said.

That’s why she and Bland now work at Hope & Help, and are dedicated to having a similar impact on others from both the main location and also on wheels in the organization’s mobile unit. It brings all of its educational and testing resources wherever needed.

“I think today’s gonna be a good day to test. Every day’s a good day to test,” Bland said.

Bland said that after a night parked outside a club, where more than eight people got tested.

“We meet the people where they’re at,” Bland explained.

But to have a real impact, they say honest, direct communication with peers and family members, including children, is also key.

“Like my grandmother said, don’t bring no babies home. She didn’t say anything about HIV or STDs,” Martin said

“It’s one pill for most people once a day. And there’s also the next realm, long-term injectables, where you go in every two to six months and get an injection or two, and then you don’t have to worry about the pills anymore,” Bland said. “I tell kids, all my dead friends would have loved the chance to have taken a pill to not die.”

In addition to the mobile clinic, Hope & Help has telehealth services.

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