Clinician Wants People To Educate Themselves About STI’s And HIV

Tammy Rutledge during the ribbon cutting at the Roseland Mental Health Clinic. PHOTO PROVIDED BY GOLDSTAR COMMUNICATIONS.
Tammy Rutledge during the ribbon cutting at the Roseland Mental Health Clinic. PHOTO PROVIDED BY GOLDSTAR COMMUNICATIONS.

Clinician Wants People To Educate Themselves About STI’s And HIV

By Tia Carol Jones

Tammy Rutledge always loved serving people. Growing up, serving people was part of her ministry at church and in her community. In College, Rutledge became a member of the Zeta Phi Beta Sorority, Inc., and continued serving people by doing community service as part of the organization, serving the elderly and visiting children’s hospitals, as well as raising and distributing funds to stop domestic violence. 

Rutledge has been in public health for almost 29 years, working at the Chicago Department of Public Health (CDPH). For the past 20 years, Rutledge has worked specifically in the STI/HIV Section in various roles, including as the STI Prevention Administrator and Director of HIV/STI Surveillance. Currently, she is the Director of Program Operations and Clinical Services for CDPH. Rutledge took the time to answer questions for the Citizen Newspaper.

Citizen Newspaper: What are some ways your work in the public health space has changed throughout the last 30 years? 

Tammy Rutledge: Oh, it certainly changed when I first began here!  When I first started in public health, I was working with TB, Communicable Diseases and the Immunization Programs. Those first few years were filled with direct service to the community in which we provided education to residents, listened to their stories and provided additional resources as they needed.  We had hundreds of nurses and because the infrastructure was much larger, we were able to provide more services and support for the community.  When I started with the health department, we had over 2,000 employees, currently we have approximately 500.  

There were larger numbers of communicable diseases back in the 90’s along with a few outbreaks that occurred, and we had to pull together across programs with the measles outbreak, in the late 80’s and early 90’s where we were going in housing projects that no longer exist such as Robert Taylor, State Way Gardens and Ida B. Wells.  The heatwave in 1995 where we were educating seniors, working with our Department on Aging (name at that time) developing strategies on how to ensure seniors were safe and then the anthrax threats that occurred in the early 2000’s that built our Bioterrorism Unit (oh, yes, I worked there as well...lol), to our current Division of Emergency Preparedness.  

HIV was prevalent and very new as it was less than 10 years old when I came to Public Health and very early on, the priorities were around education, disease investigation, understanding the infection and how to “intervene” and stop the escalation of infections.  Actually, with all the changes then and now, disease intervention is still a priority in public health.  However, there has been lots of transformation to improving technology (barely had computers in the 90’s), decreasing infrastructure (6 comprehensive clinics no longer exist, 7 STI Specialty Clinics decreased to 3 and mental health facilities decreased from 22 to 5, but now back up to 7).  

Current trends transitioned over the years to “health equity” the hot topic term that is used today, but honestly, my experience here has been that we follow disease and infections and target those populations.  So “back in the day”, we didn’t use terms like health equity and equality, diversity and inclusion, BUT all the services we offered was to ensure that all Chicago residents could receive support and have equal opportunities to healthcare access, however our populations primarily, the black and brown communities that had limited access or resources to get the services we offered. 

 This still exists today.  COVID also brought about a change in public health, on how we view responses to pandemics and “contract tracers” were the new hot topic term, but again, my team of communicable disease control investigators led efforts in Chicago to develop the contact tracer roles and responsibilities and train staff on how to investigate disease trends.  This was pivotal to identifying disease transmission, the commonality of symptoms and who were the populations at increased risk.  This is how we were able to educate the community by our front-line staff and team of expert investigators and epidemiologists identifying trends to COVID and working with CDC, resulting in the ability to provide more information to the public to protect themselves.   See why I love my job?!?!!  This is some exciting stuff!   

My work has changed over the last 3 decades as I’ve had to observe those who may not have as much experience working in public health but look at me and some of the other “historians” of CDPH as a resource.  Some of the tools we have used historically still work today.  You know that phrase, what is old is new again?  Well, it honestly works, but sometimes with a twist.  Automation of systems, evaluative tools to improve quality of services and technology to create more efficient systems.  I can’t believe that 20 plus years when I first started in the clinics, we were still using paper clip boards up until 2 years ago.... Well, we are almost there!  We have electronic check-in, finalizing electronic registration and the ability to access your test results without making a phone call.  Do you know how this frees up staff to be able to focus on the quality of care they give clients instead of data entering in registration forms?  Again, you see why I love my job??? (smile). 


CN: Working in STI/HIV Section of Public Health, how important is it to educate people about STI’s, STD’s and HIV? 

TR: My parents always taught me knowledge is power, I guess that’s another passion of mine. I used to be a trainer for our communicable disease control investigators community-based organizations who had staff providing STI and HIV education and outreach.  Seeing the transformation of new staff coming in to learn about STI’s, the myths and facts and to gain confidence in their knowledge is indescribable!  It’s like looking at my “babies” in public health become young adults after those 2-to-4-week intensive training classes.  As far as the community is concerned, the importance is because I understand and relate to those who come into our clinics.  When I first started here, I practiced my educational training on my siblings and cousins, aunts and uncles; so, when I’m talking to the community, I see my cousins, my siblings, my families in their faces and so it motivates me to make sure they understand STI’s and HIV and how to protect themselves.   


CN: What do you wish more people knew when it comes to contracting and spreading STIs, STD’s and HIV? 

TR: What I wish more people knew is that, especially with our younger generation, you don’t just get STI’s from having what they call “regular” sex.  Anal, oral and vaginal sex are all ways to contract STIs and HIV and there are many ways a person can protect themselves from HIV and STI, including abstinence, condoms, routine screening, STI treatment, HIV treatment to viral suppression, HIV PrEP and STI doxyPEP.  We offer most of these services in our STI Sexual Health Clinics.

CN: Where can people go to receive important information about, as well as get tested for STI’s, STD’s and HIV? 

TR: I am so glad you asked!  They can come to any of our three clinics.  We have Lakeview on the north side, Austin on the west side and Roseland on the far southeast side.  Please go to https://tinyurl.com/3a8ckhe6 to get more information about all the services we provide and the hours of operation.  We accept walk-ins but prefer that you make an appointment. This way your wait time will be shorter. People can also contact the CDPH-funded HIV/STI Resource Hub at 844-482-4040 or at HIVhub.org.


Latest Stories

Latest Podcast

On The 9 Run Crew