Bruce Richman,  CEO & Founder

With over twenty years in global philanthropy, Bruce has had the great pleasure to work with visionary high profile people and brands to leverage their public platforms to make a positive impact in the U.S. and abroad. He has worked on a diverse range of issues including HIV stigma, health equity, childhood obesity, child homelessness, poverty alleviation, refugee rights, girls' empowerment, gang violence prevention, integrative medicine, LGBTQ rights, media literacy, and arts education.

 

As of January 2016, Bruce has been working full-time as the Founding Executive Director of Prevention Access Campaign, (PAC) an award-winning international health equity initiative to end the dual epidemics of HIV and HIV-related stigma by empowering people with HIV with accurate and meaningful information about their sexual and reproductive health. PAC launched U=U, an international movement that is changing the very definition of what it means to live with HIV.  U=U disrupted the way in which science and public health information reach the public by empowering people with HIV to change the "risk" narrative about their bodies.  U=U is transforming lives and the HIV field. 

 

What's U=U?  (JAMA: The Journal of the American Medical Association on U=U)

 

In 2012, nine years after Bruce's HIV diagnosis, he learned the revolutionary but widely unknown fact that because his HIV treatment had reduced his virus to a level that is undetectable by tests, he'd not only stay healthy but he also couldn't transmit HIV to sexual partners. In other words, Undetectable = Untransmittable (U=U). He also learned that millions of people with HIV were suffering from the burden of stigma and fear of transmission and were not being informed about science that would transform their social, sexual, and reproductive lives. In early 2016, to address this public health and human rights crisis, he built a coalition of researchers to create a consensus on the science and launch the award-winning and globally recognized Undetectable = Untransmittable (U=U, #UequalsU) campaign to clarify and communicate that a person living with HIV on effective treatment cannot transmit HIV. 

 

U=U has grown into a global movement of over 950 organizations from nearly 100 countries committed to sharing this monumental message. He and the campaign have been featured extensively in the media and research journals including The Washington Post, The Lancet, The New York Times, CBS Evening News, MD Magazine, CBC Canada News, and China Global Television Network.  Bruce was honored by Healthline magazine as HIV Honors 2017 "Person of the Year," and Plus Magazine named him "#1 of Most Amazing HIV+ People of 2018." In 2017, Healthline named the U=U campaign "Best HIV Patient Advocacy Organization", POZ magazine awarded U=U 2017's "Best Media Campaign for People Living with HIV," and NASTAD awarded U=U the Partnership Award. In 2019, Bruce was chosen as #15 of the 2019 Pride Power 100 (recognizing New York's 100 most powerful members of the LGBTQ community), honored with the Red Ribbon Award from VNP+, the positive people's group of Vietnam, and the U.S. Congress honored Prevention Access Campaign and U=U with Congressional Recognition. 

 

Bruce received his B.A. from Brown University, his Ed.M. in social policy and planning from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and his J.D. from Harvard Law School.