Katrina Robertson
The state’s largest AIDS clinic has moved and expanded. The new facility reflects an evolution of HIV treatment over the last 15 years.
Katrina Robertson discovered she was HIV positive in 1995.
“It was a death sentence,” she says.
The recovering drug addict found her way to the small Comprehensive Care Center at Vanderbilt, founded by Dr. Stephen Raffanti just a year prior.
“The victory was someone who made it to their next appointment,” Raffanti says. “It’s amazing. Now we’re finessing whether someone is going to be osteopenic when they’re 65. Who would have thought?”
Dr. Stephen Raffanti
In the mid-90s, Raffanti didn’t care about a patient’s bone density because they weren’t going to live long enough for it to become a problem. Now, only 30% of his patients die from AIDS and most live into old age. So instead of offering hospice-type care, the new clinic at Vanderbilt 100 Oaks looks like any other regular doctor’s office.
“I have high cholesterol, says Katrina Robertson. “So my doctor watches my high cholesterol as well as she watches my T-cell count.”
The new Comprehensive Care Clinic is also 10 times larger than the old location. While AIDS has become very treatable, that’s also meant more people live with the disease. Three thousand more Tennesseans have HIV today than did five years ago.
Some 15,000 Tennesseans are living with HIV today. A thousand new cases were diagnosed last year.
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