Tooru Nemoto
Dr. Tooru Nemoto has long worked with marginalized populations in the San Francisco Bay Area. He spearheaded the Targeted Expansion Project for Outreach and Treatment (TEPOT) at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF). The project was the first in the nation funded by the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration to provide substance abuse and HIV prevention targeting high-risk APIs, including men who have sex with other men, transgender women and men, sex workers, incarcerated men and substance abusers. Researchers on his team were some of the only workers conducting consistent outreach in sex clubs and bars and providing HIV prevention education and sensitivity training programs nationwide at substance abuse treatment programs. In an effort to prevent disease, but also drug abuse and violence in a population that is off the radar of mainstream society, and often does not enjoy the same protections, they cultivated relationships for over 10 years by sending health educators, fluent in Thai, Vietnamese and Korean, to massage parlors and identifying and speaking with the management of 20 establishments.
Updated Summer 2008
Stories from This Author
Applying ‘Wa’ as an Activist Provider
May 12, 2010 • Tooru Nemoto
Since I came to this county in 1978, I learned a lot about the protection of equal rights, affirmative action, and civil rights. In Japan, I had participated in student movements in late 60’s and early 70’s and raised my voice against the Vietnam War, unequal treatment of ethnic Koreans and other minority people in Japan, environmental pollution, and corrupt Japanese government systems and big corporations. However, I was always part of the majority there and had never been treated …
