Bruce Richman,  CEO & Founder

"Bruce Richman: Meet the Man Behind U=U: U=U is one of the biggest developments in HIV since antiretrovirals, but there's more work to be done" (Plus Magazine January 2020) 

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Dr. Anthony S. Fauci,  "U=U is the foundation of being able to end the epidemic" International AIDS Conference, July 2019 

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With over twenty-five years in global philanthropy and social justice, 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. 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 interventions, integrative medicine, LGBTQ rights, media literacy, and arts education.

 

Since January 2016, Bruce has been working full-time as the Founding Executive Director of Prevention Access Campaign, (PAC)'s U=U campaign, an award-winning international health and human rights movement 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. U=U disrupted the ways in which science and public health information reach the public by empowering people with HIV to lead the change in outdated and exaggerated assessments of HIV transmission risk. U=U is transforming lives and the HIV field.  
 

In 2012, nine years after Bruce's HIV diagnosis, he learned from his HIV doctor that he could be intimate, have sex, and conceive children without any fears of passing on HIV to a partner. His HIV treatment had reduced his virus to a level undetectable by tests, which would keep him healthy and eliminate the possibility of HIV transmission through sex. In other words, Undetectable = Untransmittable (U=U). 

 

He also learned that millions of people with HIV didn't know U=U. They were greatly suffering from internal and external harms as a result of longstanding HIV stigma and were continuing to experience fear of HIV transmission in the most intimate moments of their lives. They were not being informed about science that would transform their social, sexual, and reproductive lives. By withholding this information, the HIV field was wasting opportunities to reduce HIV stigma and improve personal and public health. 

 

In early 2016, to respond to this health and human rights crisis, Bruce engaged a prominent group of researchers to create a consensus confirming that U=U was indeed true, and built an activist base to launch the Undetectable = Untransmittable (U=U, #UequalsU) movement to ensure that the science reached the people it was intended to benefit.

 

Today, U=U is a global movement of over 1000 organizations from more than 100 countries committed to sharing this monumental message with people with HIV, healthcare providers, policymakers, and the public. Bruce, PAC, and the campaign have been featured extensively in the media and research journals including Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), The Washington Post, The Lancet, The Guardian, 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), received the Shelby Hodge Vision Award from AIDS Foundation Houston, and the U.S. Congress honored Prevention Access Campaign and U=U with Congressional Recognition. In 2020, Bruce was named again in the 2020 Pride Power 100 and the 2020 Health 100 from NY City & State, and honored as "Stigma Warrior" from Howard University's International Conference on Stigma. 

 

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