Whetstone Consultations was launched in 1999 by Cheri Britton Honeycutt, M.Ed. to train public and private healthcare providers how to engage in quality HIV counseling and testing conversations. The focus was, and continues to be, the connection between high quality communication skills and a genuine desire to support the client as a direct means to meet the public health goal of slowing the spread of HIV and other communicable infections.
Many changes have happened in the world of HIV; in treatment, in the populations most affected, in society’s response to those with the infection and the ways in which it is spread. What has not changed is the need for health professionals to connect one-on-one with their patients as a means to help them change their behaviors and decrease their risk of getting infected.