POCAAN

Addressing the Impact of HIV/AIDS in Seattle

Seattle may be a city best known for housing the tech industry and giving birth to Starbucks. But the Emerald City is also recognized as being a very enlightened and progressive place. So, we wanted to learn more about an amazing agency in the city that is at the center of addressing the impact of HIV/AIDS in the Black community named POCAAN.

Established in 1987, POCAAN is a multicultural, multi-social service agency serving marginalized communities in Seattle and greater King County.  For many years their work has been rooted in HIV/AIDS prevention, but it has grown with the understanding that related issues such as substance abuse, incarceration, homelessness, sexually transmitted diseases, racism, sexism and homophobia also contribute to community marginalization and health disparities.

We had a chance to chat with the Executive Director, Steven Sawyer to learn more.

SWERV: Tell me about the history of the organization.

Steven Sawyer: POCAAN, formally known as People of Color Against AIDS Network, we no longer use that extended title because we do so much more than just HIV. But we started back in 1987 as a response to HIV as it migrated into communities of color. At that time we were one of very few organizations that were centered around addressing HIV for folks of color. It was a group of really domestic violence advocates that had started to see their loved ones, friends and family affected by the disease, and so pivoted their work to address HIV. When we started again, it was a coalition of African American, Latino, Native American, and  Asian Pacific Islanders all coming together to address HIV in their communities and you know since then it has just grown. They initially thought that they would hit this work for two three years, really, really hard, and they would all go back to doing domestic work. That was the idea, so they got really organized. They got the first grant and soon started working on education and engaging in community outreach around the virus, and so the organization grew pretty quickly.

SWERV: So the organization was started by this is multi-cultural coalition. Was there a need to address the spread of the epidemic within communities of color because the other organizations were not addressing it?

Sawyer: You know they were not addressing it effectively. I think that they were attempting to address it, but this group of individuals really felt like we could tend to our own better. And so we really wanted to engage in that work. It was multi-faceted, so there were ministers and medical personnel. The core group was mainly women who were doing domestic violence work. A number of them were lesbian, the first executive director was an out lesbian. Their friends were dying and they wanted to have a response that would be equitable, and where people could feel like they were honored. Particularly during the height of the AIDS epidemic there was so much stigma around it. The education wasn’t out there, so they felt that they could best get into their communities and educate folks.

SWERV: So how has the organization evolved over the years as the epidemic has evolved into more of a chronic illness. People are not dying from the virus like they did when it all started. They are living now. But I would imagine people come into your organization with a host of other issues, not just their issues around HIV.

Sawyer: Definitely, at the height of our organization, we were a statewide organization. We have five locations across the state of Washington, so we were really, really large with five coalitions. Many of those coalitions broke off to become their own entities. So as these coalition partners went off to do their own work, and because the landscape of HIV changed, our organization began to get smaller.

In order to address HIV, particularly in the Black community, you really had to address some of the more pertinent issues that people have. People can come in and they may be HIV-positive, but they’re concerned about housing; they’re concerned about employment; they’re concerned about transitioning if they’re coming out of jails and prisons. We’ve expanded our work in those cross sections, working with recidivism, and returning citizens. We have a youth diversion program that’s an in-school program to break the school-to-prison pipeline. We have a young adult diversion program that’s helping our young adults make better decisions so that they don’t run into problems with the law. We do a homeless prevention program. We have a senior medical mobile services program, as we know the medicine got better and people are living longer, now we have a senior population that’s infected with HIV. We take a van and go out to the senior citizen centers and do basic care. So, its expanded, but I think from the very beginning we understood that in order to effectively reach communities of color, we had to address some of the underlying issues.

SWERV: That’s a heavy burden and that requires capacity in terms of staffing, resources, and funding. How are you managing? So you’ve grown from this sort of grassroots coalition into a bonfide community center to some degree, where you’re providing an array of services. How large is your staff, and do you have the capacity and the funding to sustain such a function?

Sawyer: Staffing is always at the pivotal point of what we can and cannot do. So, we’re constantly juggling grants and foundations, donations and contributions. Right now we have a staff of 18, and we’re probably gonna grow in the next six months to about 25. Some of that is in response to COVID-19, and we’re doing some COVID messaging to kind of reach into communities of color to make sure they are aware of the vaccine, and the importance of getting it. So, we have a decent size staff, and we run off a budget that’s about 1.9 million dollars, which is not proportionate to what our sister organizations have. So there’s some disproportionality in how we’re funded as opposed to other mainstream social services agencies that are doing very similar work. But we make it work. At the end of the day, we’re here to serve community. Much of my staff comes from the community they serve. So if we are addressing issues around substance use, our substance counselor is a person who comes from that community, and is a person of color who has overcome their own addiction. And so, we try again from the very foundation of the organization, to be a for-us-by-us organization. Employing our own, bringing them in, helping them to sharpen their skills so they can do the work and go back into community. And we think that’s an effective model, and it has been for us.

SWERV: What’s been the impact of the organization? Is the epidemic over in in Seattle?

Sawyer: By no means. I think our impact has really been great. I look at impact from two ways. I just got off a call with the local division of Health and Human Services, and one of the guys whose been with them for over 20 years working on the insurance exchange [formerly] worked for POCAAN when we had office over in Spokane. So, I run into people like that all the time. One of the things that I’m very proud of is that because we have been here for so long, many of the people of color doing this work at the next levels got their training at POCCAN.

I think the other part for us is really impacting the community. We’ve done some amazing outreach and education. One of the staff members who came to work with us remembered back in the day when we used to be in schools, and POCCAN developed a coloring book. We tried to be age appropriate, so we developed a coloring book and took it into some of the local Seattle schools. That staff member still had that book and brought it in and pinned it up at his desk. I was just really proud of the transition that he made from being served by us in getting education around HIV, and now coming to serve the organization.

And then the impact on clients directly. About ninety percent of the people we serve are below the federal poverty line, and so we know that we touch those that are most underserved and who need our help the most. So, we get much joy from being able to serve community and not just giving them a hand but really showing them how to come up, connecting them to employment and other resources where they can become self sufficient. And that’s our goal, to help all our clients become self sufficient. Today we serve probably about 1,000 clients a year with all our programming, and then we do outreach to another 1,500 or so because we also established Black Pride, which is connected to the work that we do here.

SWERV: What have been some of your major challenges in doing this work?

Sawyer: The funding is always a challenge. As you know, many AIDS service organizations that particularly focus on people of color have come and gone because of funding. Different [government] administrations bring different things, and so we’re really looking at how to become more sustainable over time and looking at changing our model. I think at the end of the day we love doing the non-profit work, but we also know that we’ve got to find ways to generate different sources of income. So, we recently enrolled in 340B rebates. We’re looking at ways that we can further engage the health equity space. We have a PrEP clinic now and want to develop that out into something like a full service clinic to the LGBT community. And so that’s our long range goal. Lot of work to get there, but we feel like that will help us become more sustainable and be around to do a lot more of the social service side if we can do some for-profit stuff.

We do quite a bit of housing, so all of our programming has some component of housing. Housing is a really big issue here in Seattle, there’s a lot of homeless folk. Housing is very expensive to stay in and around the city. Most of our community, the Black community is being pushed out of the city and further south of Seattle. So, we’re looking at partnering with some of our housing associations to see how we can do some transitional housing that we have some ownership in. So that as we house people in these transitional units, we’re paying ourselves, and being able to create some sustainability.

SWERV: How has COVID impacted the organization?

Sawyer: Yeah, COVID has been hard. But I think for us serving people of color, we know that here in Seattle, Latino and African Americans are the hardest hit by COVID, and so trying to navigate that took a little bit. We pivoted and tried to do our work remotely, that didn’t work. So then I just really got with the staff and put a plan in place for alternating times. Because we do so much direct service work, it’s hard to do that from home. We launched the second office during COVID, so that gave us some opportunity to spread out folks from not all being in one office. And then we had to pivot our service that we were providing, we had to address the digital divide and many didn’t have devices or the bandwith they needed to be able to do school online. So we started providing those services, giving computers, giving phones with unlimited internet service that can be used to connect to those laptops. We gave laptops away.

For our seniors, a lot of them were scared to get out, so we started delivering groceries to them. People started donating and giving, and so we were able to raise probably about 300,000 dollars to help. Individuals were also having problems with paying their rent. We have a homeless prevention program, but they have to meet certain criteria that not everybody could meet. So we were able to take some of the funds that we got from foundations to address some of those issues. So, we really had to pivot some of our work. It meant more that we had to do, but you know we’re part of the community, so we were eager to do that. I will be so glad when all this is over. At least we can get back to some semblance of normalcy. My staff last year, many of them didn’t take time off, they kind of worked through it. So I’m encouraging them to take the time this year and take care of themselves.

SWERV: Were you able to access much of the government stimulus funding, whether it be local or national?

Sawyer: We did get both state level and county level cares act funding. It was about $100,000 dollars combined. Most of our money came from foundations and other donations. We did see an increase in our donations. People gave particularly as they saw we were in community and delivering food, and doing all that kind of work. People kind of stepped up to give to that.

SWERV: So as we put and end to HIV/AIDS, especially the new infections, what do you project as the future for your organization ,or you will you be pivoting again to more generic services?

Sawyer: I think for us, pivoting and really leaning into a more clinical model of providing PrEP. If we are to get there PrEP is going to be how we do it. PrEP uptake in the African American community is nowhere near what it is for our counterparts, and nowhere near where it needs to be for us to get there. Right now, statistically they’re still talking about one in two African American [gay or bisexual] men being HIV-positive by the time they are 30.

We know that younger people are much more susceptible to getting the virus. And so, we have to go back to some of that old outreach that we use to do. We got away from some of the education and outreach that we normally did in the in the heyday of HIV. I think getting back to some of those models where we really educated community about HIV, but also about how PrEP can be that tool, and there are many other tools.

The science is really there coming out with some great opportunities not only for HIV-positive individuals, but for HIV-negative individuals. We really gotta get that information out to the community. Getting into community talking about diabetes, and heart issues, high blood pressure and healthy eating. And doing it from a really holistic stand point. You know, creating a space where we provide reiki for clients and alternative medicines, which we don’t often dabble into unless we have someone pushing us in that direction. So, making that more accessible for underserved communities I think is a kind of niche for us.

SWERV: Is there anything else that you want people to know about the work and the organization?

Sawyer: We’re committed to doing what we can to better serve, particularly the African American community. One of the things that we know is if we’re going to address real equity issues we’ve got to be able to better fund organizations like ours that are actually on the ground doing the work. It’s kind of a for-us, by-us model.

____________

@POCAAN.ORG