From Sexual Revolution to Psychedelic Renaissance

This session will feature reflections and a conversation from a pioneering clinician and researcher on what the psychedelic ecosystem can learn from past public health innovation. HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) fundamentally changed sexual health and ushered in the biomedical prevention era when it was approved by the FDA in 2012, after being granted Breakthrough Therapy designation and showing efficacy in two phase 3 trials. PrEP was named the number one medical breakthrough of 2011, and Dr. Robert Grant – the PI of the first pivotal trial – one of TIME magazine’s most influential people. Dr. Grant went on to oversee PrEP rollout in the city of San Francisco (SF) through his role as Medical Director of the SF AIDS Foundation, including collaborative public messaging campaigns and the creation of new care roles to support PrEP patient engagement. Hailey Gilmore, who coordinated the PrEP research portfolio at the SF Department of Public Health, joins Dr. Grant to discuss lessons learned from mainstreaming paradigm-shifting, taboo-breaking science. Their discussion will cover potential implementation parallels between PrEP and psychedelic treatments in terms of patient and provider education, building care infrastructure, ensuring equity and access for vulnerable populations, the need for advocacy and the place for policy, and the challenges and rewards of shifting the public discourse on controversial topics.