Connection was a frequent theme of these conversations.
“Connection — whether virtual or the lack of connection one-on-one — is what stuck out to me,” Hines said. “This pandemic was new to everyone, not just the demographic we serve. It was new across the board. Everyone struggles trying to move into a virtual world — whether that is meeting with doctors, having an assessment, feeling like you’re not really getting served.
“Some shared that they had mixed feelings meeting with a doctor virtually. Or that they couldn’t meet virtually and they were not comfortable going to the hospital or going to a doctor’s appointment.”
That may point to a need to invest more in telehealth, Hines said.
“This can help us — as a society and especially our demographic — recognize what the needs are should this come up in the future,” Hines said.
Financial insecurity was another frequent theme. Some lost part or all of their income and had insufficient savings to tide them over.
“When there is a shock to the system, there are a lot who are already near the cliff financially,” Berl said. “They can easily fall off that cliff at a time like this.”
Every person’s situation is different, and the pandemic demonstrated again that even shared experiences have significantly different impacts on people.
"We should never think about a community of people as entirely vulnerable,” Wachtendorf said. “Although they contend with a lot of vulnerability, there are many ways this community has shown strength to overcome very difficult circumstances throughout 2020.”
As many COVID patients learned, stigma can be visited on anyone who contracts a communicable disease. That sense of stigma is not new to those living with HIV.
“We’ve always dealt with a lot of stigma,” Berl said. “And testing has always been stigmatized. This is another virus that has stigmatized other populations, including the Asian population. Hopefully, normalizing testing will bring down some of these stigmas. Anything we can do to break the stigma of HIV is important to us and to our clients.”
With COVID-19 spreading quickly, many stopped going to community-based testing sites that offered HIV testing. Testing was down by more than 50%, Berl said.
But now that the need for COVID-19 testing is recognized as critical for public health, why not have one-stop testing sites that cover multiple conditions?
“We hope to see COVID testing sites evolve to where they test for more than COVID,” Hines said. “We’re slowly getting to some kind of normalcy, but we should take advantage of all of that testing and test for opioids, hepatitis C, HIV. This study highlights the need to get tested across the board for any and everything, not just for this moment.”