Going out to eat tomorrow can help pay for local HIV services.
It’s the 10th year in Tulsa of national AIDS fundraiser Dining Out for Life, and participating restaurants will donate 25 percent or more of your bill to Health Outreach Prevention Education. It's H.O.P.E.'s biggest fundraiser the past nine years.
"It brings in between $20,000 and $40,000 a year for us, and it helps us pay for testing supplies, tests, mileage, prevention education, prevention supplies, a plethora of things we need here at H.O.P.E.," said Executive Director Kathy Williams.
Even after a decade of the fundraiser, there’s still a noticeable stigma around sexually transmitted diseases.
"People don't understand that it's just something that happens and that you can contract it a lot of different ways," Williams said. "It's a disease, like anything else. You need to treat it. You need to get it under control. You can have a long, healthy life."
Williams has also noticed people younger than 30 have a lot of misperceptions about HIV.
"They think, 'Well, there's a cure for it. Magic Johnson's still alive,' or somebody else is still alive," Williams said. "And what they don't really quite get yet until they're educated and start the dialog is that it's still there. You can still contract it, and it's forever."
Participating restaurants are serving everything from breakfast to after-dinner drinks.
