We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Marcus Hopkins. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Marcus below.

Marcus, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. What’s the backstory behind how you came up with the idea for your business?

I have been working in the fields of HIV, Viral Hepatitis, Substance Use Disorders, and Reproductive Health for most of the past twenty years, whether that be through volunteer work, advocacy work, research and reporting, or in direct services. Over the past five or six years, I began really paying attention to the types of issues that patients living with HIV and Viral Hepatitis, particularly those living in the 13-state Appalachian Region, had reading about and understanding the severity of these diseases, the educational materials that were being produced, and the websites that were intended to help them access case management, care, and treatment services.

Around 2018, one of my best friends reached out to me to discuss an idea that he and his wife were working on—a financial literacy app that would teach people how to better manage their finances, regardless of their income. And it was really then that I got to talking with him about the issues I was having with clients and People Living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA) in my work: many of them could barely read above an 8th Grade level, and when it came to math, just a handful of them could perform basic mathematical tasks that required more than three steps to get a correct answer. So, I began digging a little more into those data.

What I discovered, even four years ago, was that over half of adults in the U.S. read at or below an 8th Grade level, and nearly two-thirds of adults struggle to perform basic math. So, to me, the issue went deeper than “financial literacy” and into, “How can we expect people to be financially literate if they’re living with innumeracy (the lack of proficiency in mathematics)?”

Once the COVID-19 pandemic hit in early 2020, and almost every resource went entirely online for at least a year, including healthcare services, it became incredibly apparent that many of the PLWHA in the Appalachian Region, and those who were at high risk of contracting the virus, were unable to read the public health literature that was being produced, even though most of it was written in plain language—a term that is used to describe language that should be able to be read and understood by anyone with an 8th Grade literacy level.

In November 2021, I decided to leave my primary work in HIV and Viral Hepatitis research and advocacy and create my own 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, the Appalachian Learning Initiative (“APPLI,” pronounced like “apply”).

APPLI’s mission is to work toward a world in which every adult living in Appalachia and across the United States has equitable access to:

​1.) Free or low-cost educational opportunities to improve their ability to read and perform basic mathematics

2.) Information about public health and infectious diseases that is timely, accurate, and easy to understand

3.) High-quality, affordable, and accountable healthcare and social services to improve their quality of life

We believe that, through good data, good advocacy, and person-driven tools and program design, we can work to equitably increase access to these vital human rights.

Marcus, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

Throughout most of my career, I have worked primarily in the field of Infectious Disease education, research, reporting, and advocacy focused on HIV and Viral Hepatitis, in particular. I have always approached these issues from the position that information should be made accessible, easy to read, easy to understand, and should meet people where they are.

One of the primary goals of APPLI will be conducting research in the areas of Adult Literacy and Numeracy, specifically focusing on the types and availability of adult remedial educational services not only in Appalachia but across the U.S. This process will likely take two to three years to make the necessary inroads into both academic and community settings to establish APPLI as a trusted partner in the fight to increase literacy and numeracy in adult populations.

Some of the tools we’ll be using will include participatory research that includes people who are living with literacy and numeracy deficiencies, surveying learners, educators, and researchers to determine what types of delivery methods and tools work well and poorly in addressing these deficiencies, and finally evaluating curricula to determine how we are teaching adult learners and where there are opportunities for improvement.

Once we have accomplished these tasks, we will begin the processes of curriculum development and the building of tech-based solutions to both evaluate the literacy and numeracy levels of people who use the software, diagnose areas where improvement is most needed, and provide them with relatively adaptive curricula to help them advance to the next level in literacy using the same app or software.

We know that this development is going to take both time and money, but more than that, it’s going to take informational campaigns and advocacy that highlight the issues at hand and work alongside elected officials, business owners, and community members to build solutions to address them.

What else should we know about how you took your side hustle and scaled it up into what it is today?

Absolutely. Over most of the past 20 years, I have worked in entertainment, as a performer, in food service, and in retail. In 2013, a friend and colleague of mine in the HIV space asked me if I’d like to work part-time as a contractor focusing on Viral Hepatitis. I leapt at the chance to bring in a few extra hundred dollars a month as a consultant, and by 2015, I began working full-time as a consulting in Viral Hepatitis research and reporting, working to create the seminal HIV/Hepatitis C Co-Infection Watch with the Community Access National Network, then under the leadership of the late Bill Arnold, and now under the leadership of the inimitable Jen Laws.

I briefly returned to full-time work with an HIV advocacy group based in West Virginia just before the pandemic and spent two years with that company before turning back to consulting late last year and starting APPLI shortly thereafter.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

The primary things that drive me in my work in HIV, Viral Hepatitis, and Public Health and Social Services are my own experiences living with AIDS and having to rely on the Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program (RWHAP) and AIDS Drug Assistance Program (ADAP) to secure case management, care, and treatment services to treat my disease.

When I was first diagnosed with HIV in April 2005, the CDC recommendation for treatment initiation at the time was that patients shouldn’t start antiretroviral therapy (ARVs) until they were diagnosed as “AIDS”—a diagnosis that occurs when a person living with HIV is also diagnosed with multiple opportunistic infections and/or when their CD4 white blood cell count drops below 250/ml. In 2007, my blood draw showed that my CD4 count had dropped to 67/ml and I began ARV treatment on November 19th, 2007.

But, it took more than a month to fill those prescriptions because my “full-coverage” insurance through my employer was “maxed out” after a single prescription. So, I had to figure out how to enroll in the ADAP program in the state of Florida with virtually no assistance or guidance. This process was repeated three additional times when I moved from Florida to Tennessee, then to Los Angeles, and then back to West Virginia.

Since that time, I have striven to ensure that everyone who is in need of healthcare and social services is able to access them.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.appli.org
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/APPLIOrg
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/APPLIOrg
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin/company/APPLIOrg
• Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/APPLIOrg
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCjMScu4X4UIDZV9uPKGMbeQ
• Other: Linktr.ee – https://linktr.ee/APPLIOrg Dot – https://dot.cards/appliorg

Image Credits
Logo: McLean Fahnestock