“Brothers Group”: A support group for Black HIV Positive Men

Jesse Brooks is a longtime activist raised in Oakland, California.  He is currently Co-Chair of the Bay Area State of Emergency Coalition (BASE), Advocacy Coordinator of the AIDS Healthcare Foundation of Northern California, and Co-Chair of UCSF/CAPS Research Community Advisory Board, and a Weekly Columnist for the largest African American paper in the Bay Area, “Post News Group,” reaching over 80,000 readers. He has worked on multiple research studies, including studies for the San Francisco Department of Public Health HIV Research Division on the now famous “Explore Study” (Men who have Sex with Men, sexual behaviors and HIV transmissions) and University California San Francisco’s Urban Health Study (HIV transmissions among the IDU community).  Jesse co-wrote and starred in “The Ceremony”, a movie about internal battles, addiction, internal homophobia, and internalized stigma around HIV status, which showed at the 2006 Black LGBT film festival in Oakland to positive reviews.  In 2010, he was part of “Corner Stone Productions”, the first ever Theatre Group allowed in a County Jail (Santa Rita) to present vignettes involving HIV awareness and education, sponsored by Gilead Sciences.  He was involved in the PBS Documentary “The End game: HIV/AIDS in Black America,” which was shown at The International HIV/AIDS Conference, in 2012.  His work has been featured in numerous HIV education poster campaigns and a tabletop picture book with actor Danny Glover, and Congresswoman Barbara Lee, entitled “This Could Me: The real story of HIV/AIDS in Oakland.”