HIV/AIDS Archives | South Seattle Emerald

by Mark Van Streefkerk

Stories about radical activism in response to the AIDS crisis run the risk of being white-washed or oversimplified. Movies and documentaries about the start of the epidemic in the 1980s and 1990s, for instance, often imply that response activism was largely the work of white gay men, and typically revolve around New York, the birthplace of the international grassroots organization ACT UP (AIDS Coalition To Unleash Power). In fact, HIV and AIDS activism centrally relied on BIPOC contributions that are often left out of popular narratives, and what happened in New York is only one story.

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by Shann Thomas

Dr. Stephaun E. Wallace already had a lengthy list of job titles: the director of external relations for Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center’s (Fred Hutch) HIV Vaccine Trials Network (HVTN), faculty appointments at Fred Hutch and the University of Washington (UW), as a staff scientist and clinical assistant professor respectively, in addition to launching the inaugural Office of Community Engagement for the UW/Fred Hutch Center for AIDS Research.

After the COVID-19 pandemic hit, however, Wallace expanded his current job as director of external relations for HVTN to include the COVID-19 Prevention Network (CoVPN), which coordinated all major COVID-19 vaccine efficacy trials except Pfizer-BioNTech’s.

Wallace smiles, and says, “My mother and my team accuse me of … being a triplet; because they’re like ‘We don’t understand how one person can do all that you do and still … absorb as much information’ as I do, and have the mastery of having to categorize it and spit it back out without much concern or draw there.”

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