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) 

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

With over twenty-five years in global philanthropy and social justice, Bruce has had the great pleasure to work with visionary people and brands to leverage their public platforms for positive impact. He has worked on a diverse range of issues including HIV stigma and prevention, health equity, childhood obesity, child homelessness, poverty alleviation, refugee rights, girls' empowerment, gang violence interventions, integrative medicine, LGBTQ rights, media literacy, and arts education.
 
In January 2016, Bruce took a hiatus from IPG to work full-time as the Founding Executive Director of the Prevention Access Campaign, (PAC) and to launch the 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 living 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. The U=U community-led movement is leading the change in outdated and exaggerated assessments of HIV transmission risk. U=U is transforming lives and the HIV field.  

Bruce is passionate about U=U because U=U changed his life.  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 fear of passing on HIV to a partner. He learned that 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). Almost a decade of fear and internalized stigma, and depression had begun to lift. 
 
He also learned that millions of people living with HIV worldwide didn't know U=U. They were greatly suffering from internal and external harms as a result of longstanding HIV stigma. People living with HIV 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 and reduce new HIV transmissions. By withholding this information, opportunities to reduce HIV stigma and improve personal and public health were being wasted. 
 
In early 2016, to respond to this health and human rights crisis, Bruce mobilized activists and researchers to lead PAC with him and create and issue a science-based consensus statement confirming that U=U was indeed true. PAC built an international 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, the U=U message has been endorsed by the global medical and scientific community including the World Health Organization (WHO), U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), U.S. President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), National Institutes of Health (NIH), United Nations (UN), and many governments worldwide. The U=U message spans every continent with over 1000 organizations from more than 100 countries committed to sharing this monumental message with people living with HIV, healthcare providers, policymakers, and the public. The movement is sharing the message from Brazil to China to Russia to South Africa and fighting for access to quality healthcare to keep people living with HIV healthy and prevent new transmissions. 

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, TODAY Show, The Guardian, The New York Times, CBS Evening News, MD Magazine, CBC Canada News, USA Today, 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 Bruce and 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 New York 2020 Pride Power 100 and 2020 Health 100 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 University Graduate School of Education, and his J.D. from Harvard Law School.