Conversation with Rick Carlisle

When he was vice president of Sarasota Memorial Hospital, Rick Carlisle served as the liaison for the Community AIDS Network (CAN). In his new role as CAN’s president and CEO, Carlisle wants to help prevent the disease, particularly among the older demographic that’s increasingly at risk.

Why did you get involved?

I started serving on the board about five years ago. I stayed involved with the organization after I built this building because Susan Terry, who was director at the time, was a really good friend of mine. Susan had asked me to join the board. I couldn’t do it because I was building a real estate development and construction company... but I did decide about five years ago to join the board.
To do this, you really have your heart in taking care of these people who contract HIV. I’ve always had a passion about that. 

Is there complacency about the disease because it doesn’t make as many headlines as it did in the past?

There is complacency. Back then, when you contracted HIV, it was a death sentence. Then, the drugs started getting better and better. People are living with HIV and AIDS today,  but it is not something you want to live with. Even the drugs that you take have just horrible side effects.
People don’t realize that in 2014, Florida was the No. 1 state in the nation for newly diagnosed HIV cases. During the last three years, in the 50-and-older group, there has been a 15% increase every year in new infections. It’s not just a gay disease. We’re seeing a lot of heterosexuals who are getting this disease. They find it in nursing homes.

How do you explain that increase?

This may sound foolish, but with the rise in use of Cialis and Viagra, the older population is having more sex now than they’ve ever had before. They’re having unprotected sex... All it takes is for one person to be infected and all of a sudden you have a spread in the disease.

How does CAN fight that in Sarasota?

What we try to do through our prevention group is go to these assisted-living facilities and retirement communities and try to get them to use condoms and protection.

Is providing affordable medication a challenge?

Because we’re a nonprofit and because we participate in grant programs through the CDC and the Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program — which is basically the last resort — if people cannot afford care, we will still take care of them. Through the Ryan White program we’re actually allowed to participate in a government-assisted pharmaceutical program that allows us to buy drugs at a discounted rate.
We can then take the savings off of those drugs and provide it back to the patient population for free care.

How do life-extending treatments that didn’t previously exist affect the organization’s mission?

Our providers, practitioners and nurses who see patients have to be more rounded in the care they deliver now. Instead of just treating the HIV and trying to keep the patient alive, what’s happening is because the disease attacks the immune system, it causes liver issues, cardiac issues, you name it. 

It starts affecting all the systems of the body. Our doctors, instead of being infectious disease doctors, have to become like general practitioners. They have to treat all these other secondary issues that arise.

What are some of the challenges that people might not know about AIDS?

It’s an amazing disease that has the ability to resurrect itself.
Even when the best drugs are put on the market and people think that a cure is around the corner, this disease mutates and finds a way to survive.