What We Do
Utah sees an average of 2,000 new hepatitis C cases and 125 new HIV cases every year. Unfortunately, both are on the rise. So why aren’t we talking about it?
Our Mission
We are Hope on T.T.a.P.P, Inc., (which stands for Testing, Treatment and Peer-led Prevention), otherwise called HoT, a recognized 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, and we are a mobilized rapid point-of-care program. We have started a movement against conventional medical establishments that are treating patients with old world mentalities and discriminating stigmas. We believe that everyone deserves equal access to healthcare resources that can improve their quality of life. This includes access to free HIV and hepatitis C testing, judgment-free prevention conversations, and barrier-free pathways to life-saving medications. We provide mobile harm reduction services to vulnerable and medically under-served communities across the state, including people who use and inject drugs, sex workers, those coming out of incarceration, communities of color, LGBTQ+ and those located in rural counties who are afraid to seek out these services due to fear of, “small town talk”. Founded by staff who have lived experience, backed up by a team of loving providers, and confidential services provided in the comfort of the client’s own environment, are the reasons that HoT is changing how healthcare is delivered.
Now Offering Online PrEP Services!
Meet Our People
Executive Director
Sequan Kolibas
Sequan is a founder partner and the Executive Director of Hope on Ttapp, and she knows all too well what the stigma of shame looks and feels like, after being given an HIV positive diagnosis in 2013. After living in silence and fear for the first 6 years, she grew tired of watching her community endure stigmatizing treatment by medical providers. So in 2020, she became a founding partner of HoT. She is now a certified Harm Reduction Navigator, a certified HIV Peer Navigator for the University of Utah, a member of the Utah HIV Planning Group, Utah’s Getting to Zero HIV Strategic Planning Committee and Utah’s hep C Elimination Group, under the umbrella of the Utah Department of Health and Human Services. She recently returned from the nation’s largest constituent-led, HIV advocacy conference in Washington D.C, AIDSWatch. She met with Utah’s elected Legislators during their Congressional hearings, where she represented Utah, advocating for much needed changes to the state’s HIV-specific policies. It is her mission to help prevent the spread of HIV and hepatitis C, to find those who may be struggling and show them that their diagnosis does not define them. She is no longer silent, she will not stand for “less than” treatment and she is yelling for those who feel they have no voice.
Board Director
January Riggin
January is the driving force behind Utah’s local non-profit and certified Syringe Exchange Program, Soap 2 Hope, whose mission has created a community night outreach that has now saved thousands of lives. She builds awareness, provides trauma-informed care, offers resources that include weekly hygiene kit deliveries, and advocates for women and men who are involved in sex exploitation/trafficking/work. These communities are also facing addictions, abuse and trauma. January has fought through her own sexual and physical abuse, sex exploitation and addiction, and just celebrated 16 years in recovery. She has been a face and voice of hope and love in our locally isolated and vulnerable communities and understands the need for the services that Hope on Ttapp provides. Soap 2 Hope was nominated for a 2019 Unstoppable Award and has been recognized for her outstanding service work by ABC News, and received their honorable, Giving Back Award. She recently left her position as an On-Call Crisis Response member for the ARCHES Team at USARA, being dispatched to counsel emergency room patients who have been brought in as overdose or suicide admits. Her absolute mission and passion in life, is to make every person she comes into contact with, feel like THEY MATTER.
Board Director
Adam Spivak, M.D.
Dr. Adam Spivak joined the Division of Infectious Diseases at the University of Utah in the fall of 2011, after completing residency and fellowship training at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland. He cares for HIV patients as a member of the University of Utah’s Clinic 1A staff and attends on the inpatient Infectious Diseases consult service at the University of Utah Hospital. Dr. Spivak teaches in the medical school, conducts translational research on HIV persistence and eradication, is a member of the Utah HIV Planning Group, and Utah’s Getting to Zero Strategic Planning Committee. He is a co-founder and leader of Utah's first and only free HIV prevention clinic, which serves uninsured clients, providing them with PrEP and STI testing at no cost.
Board Director
Terry D. Box, M.D.
Dr. Terry Box is our Moses! He is an Associate (Clinical) Professor of Medicine at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. He is also the Medical Director of Project ECHO, which enables patients to get specialty-level care in their home communities, by virtually connecting community providers with specialized healthcare teams, enabling collaborative learning. He joined the faculty of the School of Medicine in 2009, after a lengthy tenure in hepatology and liver transplantation at LDS Hospital in Salt Lake, beginning in 1983. At the University of Utah, as a member of the Liver Transplant Program, he continues his duties in the clinical care of patients with liver disease, both before and after liver transplantation. Since 1995, he has been actively involved in clinical research in the areas of chronic viral Hepatitis B and C, NASH and transplant hepatology. Dr. Box has a unique perspective of caring for liver transplant recipients, having himself been the recipient of a life-saving liver transplant in 2002. Dr. Box has been an advisor for other community based service organizations including, Team Donate Life Utah, American Liver Foundation: Utah Chapter, and Community Nursing Services of Utah.
Board Director
Georgia de Katona
Georgia de Katona is an R.N., with a Bachelor of Science in Nursing from New Mexico State University, and a Bachelor of Arts in Anthropology from UCLA. Once a managing editor and freelance travel writer, then in arts & economic development for New Mexico artists, she has been in healthcare for 13 years as an advocate and ally, always looking for ways to serve communities with radical kinship and empowering empathy. Prior to moving to Texas in 2019, Georgia managed the HIV/HCV/STI Prevention and Linkage to Care program for Southwest Care Center in New Mexico, where she and her team built relationships with critical community partners, both statewide and nationwide. They started a mobile and fixed site syringe exchange program in Santa Fe, to meet a critical and unaddressed need in that community. She is the lead clinical nurse at 2 Central Austin Kind Clinics, providing stigma-free access at no cost, to sexual health and wellness services and gender care.