Sonoma County’s Responses to the AIDS Epidemic, 1981-1997

Much of the existing historical scholarship on AIDS is centered on the assumption that the AIDS epidemic existed solely within a national or urban context. These studies suggest that the social and cultural implications of the AIDS epidemic were inherently urban in nature and as a result, often overshadow the smaller, rural experience of AIDS. Rural Sonoma County was unique in that its West County gay and lesbian resort areas provided for the influence of urban dwellers on approaches to the AIDS epidemic that more isolated, rural areas might not have experienced. As a result of Sonoma County’s rural and urban influenced population, the activists, community leaders, healthcare workers and volunteers played pivotal roles in advocating for their communities with sophisticated strategies that were unique to Sonoma’s rural environment. Through this inclusion of rural responses to AIDS, the historical narrative of the AIDS epidemic is thereby enhanced through the perspectives of Sonoma County’s rural responders.