Perhaps you're familiar with cafe-laundromats or sushi restaurants with tap dancing. But did you ever visit a second-hand clothing and furniture store to take care of your health-care needs? An audio segment and post on the KERA News (Dallas) blog features a local Out of the Closet shop with a free HIV testing site, and soon a community pharmacy, inside their thrift store - making it the 22nd branch of the U.S. chain to have both.
Bret Camp, the Texas regional director of the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, which operates the thrift stores, said in the post, "Our pharmacy will have everything from blood pressure meds to diabetes supplies...How many places can you go and look at jeans while you’re waiting for your medication?”
More from the post:
It’s an innovative idea, says [Douglas Owens, MD,] a professor of medicine at Stanford University who also serves on the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force.
A number of organizations, including the CDC and U.S. Preventive Services Task Force recommended universal HIV testing. Of course testing is only the first step, Owens says.
"When people get an adequate treatment for HIV, the drugs reduce their infectivity and so treatment for HIV not only benefits the person who has HIV; it also provides a very important public health benefit that reduces transmission," Owens explains in the audio segment.
Previously: Task force recommends HIV screening for all people aged 15 to 65, Using Facebook to prevent HIV among at-risk groups, Task force issues draft recommendation for universal HIV screening and National HIV screening and testing could be very cost-effective
Photo by Marilyn Roxie
