Dr. Andrew Coco practiced medicine for thirty-four years before retiring at the end of 2019. The last twenty years of his career were spent with Lancaster General Health’s Comprehensive Care, a primary care practice for adults and children diagnosed with HIV as well as transgender individuals. Comprehensive Care was born out of federal legislation that was named after a teenage boy named Ryan White who was infected with HIV and diagnosed with AIDS in 1984 following a blood transfusion to treat hemophilia. In 1990, congress enacted the Ryan White CARE Act which provides funding for Comprehensive Care and programs like it around the country.
Dr. Coco joined Comprehensive Care shortly after it’s creation in the late 1990s, and has remained with the practice ever since. Additional physicians have been added along the way. All of the physicians are HIV specialists, but were also trained as family physicians. Beyond standard primary care, all aspects of the HIV virus are treated by Comprehensive Care.
While the social stigma of HIV remains and there has never been a cure for the virus, medication developed in the mid-90s have dramatically improved the quality of life for individuals who are HIV positive. The virus can be suppressed to the point where someone who is HIV positive will no longer be contagious.
Find out more online at at Lancaster General Health Comprehensive Care
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