Episode #464 Winning the War on HIV, With Marco Benjamin
- 9 hours ago
- 5 min read
On This Episode Of The Public Health Epidemiology Conversations (PHEC) Podcast
What does it look like when lived experience becomes a public health career? In this episode of the PHEC Podcast, Dr. Huntley sits down with Marco Benjamin, Director of Public Health at the Joseph H. Neal Health Collaborative in South Carolina, for a conversation that is equal parts inspiring and urgent.
Marco has been living with HIV for more than 20 years, and rather than letting that diagnosis define him in a limiting way, he channeled it into decades of advocacy, innovation, and community-centered work. This conversation explores what it actually takes to reach communities that have been overlooked, undereducated, and underserved on issues of sexual health and HIV.
A State in Crisis (and a Collaborative Fighting Back)
South Carolina consistently ranks among the states with the highest HIV rates in the country, and the numbers behind that reality are striking. Marco opens the conversation by grounding listeners in what is happening right now across the state, including the thousands of people living with HIV who are not engaged in care. His organization, JHN Health, is working to change that through a framework built around four pillars: Education, Testing, Access, and Retention.
Meeting People Where They Are (For Real)
One of the most compelling threads in this episode is Marco's insistence on what "meeting people where they are" actually means in practice. It does not mean opening a clinic and waiting. It means loading up a van, showing up to a rural Fourth of July parade, and offering free testing to people who have never been tested in their lives. It means swapping clinical language for plain language that resonates. It means rebranding HIV services as "intimate health" so that communities who have historically shut the door on HIV conversations will let you in.
Why Innovation Requires Honesty About Barriers
Marco does not shy away from naming the real barriers driving South Carolina's HIV rates. Religion, stigma, rurality, language access, health literacy, and a deep distrust of systems all come up in this conversation. Rather than treating these as insurmountable obstacles, Marco explains how JHN Health has built creative entry points, from offering free sports physicals to providing CDL physicals, all in exchange for an HIV test. The approach is clever, compassionate, and grounded in an understanding of what communities actually need.
Staying Grounded in the Why
Marco closes the conversation with a message that resonates far beyond HIV work: stay connected to the people you serve, never lose sight of your why, and do not be afraid to think differently. It is a reminder that community-based solutions are where real change happens, and that the most powerful public health work often starts exactly where Marco's did.
About Our Guest
Marco Benjamin
Marco Benjamin is a nationally recognized public health leader, advocate, and HIV-positive consumer who serves as the Director of Public Health for the Joseph H. Neal Health Collaborative (JHN Health) in South Carolina. With a career rooted in health equity, community empowerment, and innovation, Marco works at the intersection of lived experience and systems change to expand access to prevention, testing, and treatment, especially for underserved and rural communities.
Marco is widely known for leading the Condom Nation Tour, a nationwide campaign that traveled to more than 200 cities across 48 states and distributed millions of condoms at bus stops, shelters, and community events across the country. He also served as National Director of Sexual Health at CVS Health, where he helped shape and expand access to sexual health services across one of the largest retail healthcare platforms in the United States.
At JHN Health, Marco leads public health strategy through the organization's four pillars of care, driving innovative outreach that includes mobile health initiatives, community-based screenings, and partnerships that strengthen linkage to care for people living with and at risk for HIV, Hepatitis C, sexually transmitted infections, and chronic conditions including diabetes.
Listen To This Episode Of The Public Health Epidemiology Conversations (PHEC) Podcast
Conversation Highlights
Lived experience is a professional asset.
Marco's HIV diagnosis did not derail his career; it became the foundation for it. His personal experience drives his approach to advocacy, outreach, and community trust-building in ways that professional training alone cannot replicate.
Rebranding saves lives.
JHN Health shifted from advertising "free HIV testing" to offering "free intimate health screenings," leading with conditions like diabetes and Hepatitis C before asking for an HIV test. This reframe opens doors that the words "HIV testing" often close.
True outreach means going to the community, not waiting for it.
Marco's team goes to rural parades, community events, and neighborhoods where people are, rather than expecting people to seek out clinic-based services. Proximity and presence are essential to reaching those most in need.
Plain language is not optional; it is a health equity tool.
Marco explains how using everyday language instead of clinical terminology changes who can access and act on health information. If people do not understand the message, the message is not reaching them.
U=U is a critical education gap.
Many people in the communities Marco serves do not know that Undetectable equals Untransmittable, meaning a person with an undetectable viral load cannot sexually transmit HIV to a partner. Closing this knowledge gap is central to reducing stigma and new transmissions.
Stigma and language shape health behavior.
Marco challenges the common use of "clean" to describe a negative HIV result, pointing out that this language inadvertently stigmatizes people living with HIV. Shifting to clinical language like reactive and non-reactive is a small but meaningful change.
Systems change requires getting inside the room.
Marco's journey from protesting outside CVS buildings to working inside CVS Health is a powerful illustration of how advocacy sometimes means finding ways to influence systems from within, not just from the outside.
"We're utilizing HIV as an anchor to address social determinants of health. To address food insecurities, to address housing, just to address someone, just to say I love you. That's social determinants of health before we're looking at a prescription and a test." — Marco Benjamin
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Public Health Consulting To Support You
DrCHHuntley LLC is a public health consulting firm that specializes in epidemiology consulting, supporting large nonprofit organizations in South Carolina, North Carolina, Georgia, Mississippi, and Florida that serve Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC). We also provide nationwide public health consulting and epidemiology consulting support to BIPOC organizations across the United States.
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