The San Francisco Department of Public Health (SFDPH) received funding from the CDC to develop a five-year plan full of innovative and implementable ideas to end the HIV epidemic in San Francisco, in alignment with the federal Ending the HIV Epidemic in America Initiative. Unlike many jurisdictions, San Francisco decided to use these funds to focus more broadly on the “syndemic” of HIV, HCV, and STIs in the city. They hired Facente Consulting to design and support a rapid planning process, coordinate a massive community engagement effort with assistance from five subcontractors representing the plan’s priority populations, refine strategies, and develop an epidemiological profile and situational analysis, ultimately synthesized into a final comprehensive plan.
Facente Consulting wrote a first draft of the “Ending the Epidemics” plan between October and December 2019, when CDC required a first draft be submitted. This draft was refined throughout 2020 in coordination with the Ending the Epidemics Steering Committee, culminating in a comprehensive final draft that received concurrence from the HIV Community Planning Council on October 26, 2020, and was submitted to CDC in early December 2020.