39 minutes | Thursday, 9 February 2023
On this episode Graeme Smith catches up with the founder of iwantprepnow.co.uk and PREP lead for national UK HIV charity, Terrence Higgins Trust, Greg Owen.
Greg is unique .... born in Belfast in the 80's he moved to London to study dance and drama... he like many of us has talked frankly about doing sex work and his experiences of chemsex.
In fact... HIV researcher Sheena McCormack credits him with helping decrease the number of HIV diagnoses in the UK. From 2015–2016, the number of new diagnoses in London had decreased by 40%, while around the UK it was decreased by around a third. Owen recalls McCormack saying to him, "There are thousands of people who didn’t become HIV-positive this year because of you."
In the first of a few epidodes , me and greg talked about prep in the context of LGBTQ+ history month, in the run up to him doing a talk at The University of Birmingham on this very subject a few days later.