Luther C. Brock, Sr. – Founder

Luther C. Brock, Sr. has extensive professional expertise developed over the last 20 years through is work with communities hardest hit by HIV/AIDS and HCV. He is well known for his extensive knowledge in the effective use of cross-cultural education and outreach strategies to communities at greatest risk for these potentially life-threatening viruses.

Since 2007, Mr. Brock has worked as a consultant on HCV and HIV/AIDS projects in the San Francisco Bay Area and Atlanta, Georgia. Here in the Bay Area he works with leading infectious disease physicians from San Mateo County Medical Center, Kaiser Redwood City, Stanford University Liver Clinic, the Veterans Administration. In Atlanta, he has worked with the National Minority Clinical Research Association and the Tangu Counseling and Treatment Services and the Reggie and Dionne Smith Foundation.

Mr. Brock is a co-founding member of Free at Last, an alcohol/drug treatment agency in East Palo Alto, California which, at one time had the largest population of HIV positive African American men east of Mississippi. After his leadership role with Free at Last, Mr. Brock coordinated education and outreach activities for the Stanford AIDS Clinical Trial Group (ACTG) where he forged a link between local ethnic minority communities and Stanford’s university-based HIV/AIDS clinical trials unit. In 1998, he was invited to serve as Director of Community Education and Outreach Services for the AIDS Community Research Consortium (ACRC) in Redwood City, where he co-developed the HIV and HCV Living Now programs, the first peer education programs of their kind in the US.

Mr. Brock has been influential in decisions made about the health care of marginalized and under-served communities discussed at local, state, national, and international conferences, such as the International Conference on AIDS in Durban, South Africa. He has served on numerous HIV and HCV planning groups, including the San Francisco HCV Consortium and the California HCV Strategic Task Force. Mr. Brock served as co-chair of the San Mateo County AIDS Community Prevention Planning Committee and a member of the Program Committee of the Annual Conference of Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections, a prestigious appointment given no other African American community member in California. He is a co-founder of the AIDS Treatment Advocacy Committee (ATAC), where he co-developed a national mentoring program for ethnic minorities to serve as advocates in their own communities.

After retiring briefly in 2003 in Atlanta, Mr. Brock returned to his work to develop “Hepatitis C: You and Me”, a program designed to reduce the spread of HCV, increase the quality of life for the participants as they address their own HCV infection, and provide peer based training for treatment advocates willing to give back to their own communities affected by HCV. This program provides accurate, current, situational and culturally relevant information about HCV treatment and healthcare to support understanding and promote proactive treatment intervention and health care management strategies.

Mr. Brock has served in an advisory capacity to numerous pharmaceutical companies and national community education programs providing his insights on the establishment of HIV/HCV treatment programs needed around the country.