‘Action and progress link our globe’

Empowering community: ‘Access starts with information’

Driffin is no stranger to the challenges posed by an HIV diagnosis, nor to how critical good information is to ensuring someone can make the best decisions for themselves. Initially planning to become a doctor, he knew he wanted to improve health equity and help people stay healthy, but an HIV diagnosis shortly after Driffin graduated with his Bachelor of Science in biology appeared to be a roadblock. He worried that the virus and associated stigma would make it difficult to pursue an arduous medical degree.

Luckily, the self-described science nerd discovered public health.

“I thought, ‘Oh, I can do all of these things [to keep people healthy] at the intersection of public health and still help people at the population level vs. the individual level.’ It was the golden ticket,” Driffin said.

He went on to get a Master of Public Health from Morehouse School of Medicine and a doctorate in public health from Georgia State University in December 2023.

“Really, public health should be called politics and health — because our health is so political,” Driffin said. “The ZIP code that you live in translates into what preventive measures or what treatment options you have.”

He’s kept his focus on creating health-affirming solutions at the population level, particularly for Black, same gender-loving and gender non-conforming communities — all often overlooked or underprioritized by our health care system.

Driffin’s efforts extend beyond his degrees and work at the HVTN, which he joined in 2022. Previously, he and his friends co-created the Young Black Gay Men’s Leadership Initiative (or YBGLI, “because we love initials”), which operated between 2011 and 2017.

“It was aimed at creating a pipeline to develop leadership capabilities and leadership skills at the intersection of housing access, health care research and community mobilization,” he said.

Over four years, about 550 young gay Black men across the U.S. attended YBGLI summits. Many of them are now PhD-level researchers, in the pharma industry or putting what they learned into practice in community mobilization. Driffin also co-created THRIVE Support Services (Transforming HIV Resentment into Victories Everlasting Support Services), a patient-advocacy and social support network for Black gay men living with HIV.

“Living in Atlanta, I didn’t see the level of support I thought was important,” he said. So Driffin and a small group of friends formed a peer support network that eventually spanned the nation and helped people all along the HIV spectrum get the support they need to prioritize their health.

The model has been adapted to help Black women, transgender and gender non-conforming people with HIV live healthier lives as well, Driffin said.

At the HVTN, Driffin leans on his scientific know-how to help people understand the latest scientific advances and how research findings can empower their own health care choices.

“I really traverse different communities and different stakeholders,” he said. “I break down 35,000-feet level concepts into bite-sized nuggets.”

He brings the important messages about HIV vaccine work and broadly neutralizing antibodies — a type of immune protein being developed into what scientists hope will be a long-acting preventive or treatment strategy — to people most likely to be affected by or vulnerable to HIV. This includes those in gender non-conforming communities and trans-identifying people, particularly people of color within these groups.

Driffin’s messages have a global reach. Though based in Atlanta, Driffin has attended international conferences dedicated to HIV and AIDS research and outreach, including the International AIDS Conference (last held in Munich) and the International Conference on AIDS and Sexually Transmitted Infections in Africa, which last convened in Harare, Zimbabwe.

Driffin recalled being asked recently to choose his biggest public health moment.

“It’s seeing individuals empowered, going from a place where they didn’t think they could be — planting a seed and watching it germinate,” he said. “Health care access starts with information.”

Attending World AIDS Day ‘truly amazing’

Driffin was invited to speak at the White House’s World AIDS Day event by Director of the White House Office of National AIDS Policy Francisco Ruiz.

“I thought about the fact that, even though it was World AIDS Day, we live in a bubble of public health and HIV the average American doesn’t know about,” Driffin said. “So I instantly thought about the fact that we have to talk about what this day is, how long it’s been going on, the significance of it.”

His speech carried a message of hope and optimism, focusing on the remarkable strides made in HIV care over more than four decades of work.

Driffin’s special guest was his mother, Mrs. Jeaneen Nelson, MSW, who drove from her home in South Carolina to Washington, D.C., to see her son speak. To ensure that she’d remain calm enough to make the six-hour drive, Driffin kept the best for last: Just prior to his remarks, he and his mother had the opportunity to personally meet and chat with the president and first lady.

“It was truly amazing,” he said.

Before the event, Driffin spoke with HIV activist Mike Smith, now executive director of The NAMES Project Foundation (custodian of the quilt). The memorial quilt, which Smith helped begin, was first displayed on the National Mall in 1987. Smith, now on the verge of qualifying for Medicare, has spent the intervening years working to bring it to the White House, he told Driffin.

After giving his opening remarks at the event, Driffin handed it off to First Lady Jill Biden. She addressed those bereft of their own loved ones, many commemorated on the quilt, all stolen by HIV.

“I think of the mothers who stitched their pain into a patchworked panel so the world would remember their child not as the victim of a vicious disease but as a son who had played in the high school jazz band, as the child who grew up to proudly serve our nation in uniform, as the daughter whose favorite holiday was Christmas,” First Lady Biden said. “The act of quilting creates a work of art that wraps us up in its beauty.”

White-Ginder recalled how her son Ryan was just 13 when he acquired HIV through a blood transfusion.

“AIDS took him from us five-and-a-half years later but not before he fought his way back to school and taught America we needed to fight AIDS and not the people who have it,” she said.

On her first visit to Washington, D.C., White-Ginder said the first senator she met was Senator Joe Biden.

“With tears in his eyes, he told me that he had lost his child and that the only way he had found to deal with it was through grief and through a purpose,” she said.

President Biden spoke as a bereaved parent.

“To the families here today, as Jill just said, we know how hard it is in different ways, but we know. We know. I hope you can find comfort in remembering the one thing that’s never lost: your love for them and their love for you,” he said.

President Biden told the story of the quilt, conceived of by Smith and fellow HIV/AIDS activist Cleve Jones in 1985. Begun as one name on a single panel, the quilt has grown to include 50,000 panels and 110,000 names — a testament not merely to the lives taken by HIV, but the loved ones left behind. The largest community art project in the world, the president noted, the quilt weighs 54 tons.

He recalled the stigma and misinformation rife in the HIV pandemic’s early days, as well as the lifesaving strides made possible by the President’s Emergency Plan on AIDS Relief. PEPFAR, launched by President George W. Bush, has saved 26 million lives worldwide.

“Together, we honor the spirit of resilience and the extraordinary strength of people, families, and communities affected by HIV/AIDS, including the nearly 40 million people living with HIV around the world today,” the president said. “And we send a clear message to the nation and to the world that we stand united in the fight against this epidemic.”

Driffin continues this legacy for a new generation, First Lady Jill Biden said.

“Daniel, your leadership is redefining what it means to support people with HIV — not only access to health care but with community as well,"  she said. "Because of your work, more people know that they are not alone."