Gilead Sciences Executives Discuss HIV/AIDS Research And Programs Benefiting The Black Community

HIV has disproportionately affected the Black community; and Gilead Sciences has been a valued member in the fight to end the HIV epidemic.

Gilead Sciences Senior Director David Malebranche and Executive Community Liaison Danielle Houston spoke with BLACK ENTERPRISE about Gilead’s HIV-based work in the Black community, Southern states, and how Gilead’s advancements in HIV testing and medication have changed the lives of HIV victims.

“I’m extremely proud,” Malebranche said. “When you look at 1999 going into the 2000s, that’s when things started to ramp up regarding the science, so combination medications that include two medications in one pill. In 2006, the first single-tablet regimen came out, so those medications started to really change the game.”

Malebranche, originally from Schenectady, NY, is a board-certified internal medicine physician who trained at Michigan State and Emory Universities. He previously worked at the Emory University Department of Medicine, the University of Pennsylvania Student Health Center, and the Morehouse College School of Medicine.

In 2019, Black Americans accounted for 13% of the U.S. population, however, they made up 42% (15,305) of the 36,801 new HIV diagnoses in the country that year. In 2018, Black Americans made up 41% of people living with HIV and 43% of all new HIV diagnoses.

Houston, a Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine alum, began working in HIV/AIDS research in 2008 at the Center for AIDS, Information & Advocacy. Houston began working for Gilead in January 2022 as an executive community liaison to end the AIDS epidemic in her hometown of Houston.

“I would say one of Gilead’s strongest commitments is their workforce of community liaisons,” Houston told BE. “Gilead allows us to use its innovative scientific community resources and we’re all given a local territory. So we look at the local epidemic and we look at the local capacities and the local resources plus our own experiences and we work towards ending the HIV epidemic in our territory. So we take our global resources local and then personal, we know the names of the people whose lives were impacting, we know the community partners that are doing the work on a daily basis.” 

Gilead is also bringing awareness and education to Black communities across the U.S. that have been impacted by health disparities, through its Compass Initiative, a 10-year, $100 million program started in 2017 to address the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the Southern United States, by collaborating with local community organizations.

The biopharma giant also launched the Racial Equity Community Impact Fund in 2021. The fund is a three-year program providing $10 million in grants to 20 high-impact organizations working to tackle racial inequities affecting Black communities across the United States.

“These are particularly important because they focus on the areas that are most impacted,” said Malebranche. “When you look at the U.S., 50% of the new HIV diagnosis are happening in the South and so the focus with a lot of these initiatives and particularly the compass initiative is getting funding and resources into the hands of the people who have been doing the work for years so they can do the stuff they know they’re doing.”

Gilead has also teamed up with HBCUs in the South to create the next generation of Black medical professionals. Gilead is using its partnerships with Morehouse College and the Xavier University of Louisiana to create a college-to-career pipeline for Black men and women in the medical profession, including sexual health and HIV prevention.

“There’s also a focus on training and really getting people geared into the medical and health fields so that we can have more Black people working in the field of HIV prevention, treatment, and sexual health because obviously representation matters so when you see more of us in the field, younger people who are coming up will see that and say oh I can do that, I didn’t realize that was part of the medical profession,” Malebranche told BE.

Gilead has served as a trusted ally in the fight against HIV/AIDS. Gilead researchers and scientists have developed 11 commercially available HIV medications and are advancing a robust pipeline of next-generation therapeutic options. Additionally, 16.5 million people with HIV are estimated to be on Gilead-based pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) medicine.

“Now it’s gotten to the point where our medications are so advanced and the science is so advanced that people are living longer lives and when someone gets diagnosed with HIV today their life expectancy is very comparable to someone who is not living with HIV if they stay on their medications so to say I’m kind of proud of the progress is an understatement,” Malbranche told BE.