Heather Altman, MPH (Chapel Hill, NC) has been working with Carol Woods Retirement Community since 2003, and is currently the Project Director of Community Connections for Seniors, a 3-year grant funded by The Duke Endowment to implement initiatives at both the North Carolina state and local levels addressing service delivery, workforce development and policy and planning issues related to aging services. Prior to joining Carol Woods, Ms. Altman served as Project Director for the Center for the Advancement of Health, a Washington, DC-based policy organization; Director of Research for Howe-Lewis International, a healthcare executive search firm; and Executive Assistant to the President at Planned Parenthood Federation of America. Ms. Altman received her Bachelor of Arts degree from Brandeis University and her Master of Public Health degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Alison Altschuller (Buffalo, NY) is an Adult Nurse Practitioner and HIV specialist working at AIDS Community Services in Buffalo, New York. She has a background in homeless health care, and a particular interest in the complexities of mental health and HIV prevention and management. In addition to her Masters in Nursing, Alison has a BA in Environmental Studies; prior to becoming a nurse she worked for Zipcar during its start-up days, and feels passionately about the impact of the built environment on human health.
Helena Bushong (Chicago, IL) has worked as an educator and activist in a variety of capacities over the years, serving on the Greater Chicago Area HIV/AIDS Service Planning Council and its Sub-Committee on Health Disparities Needs Assessment; speaking as “the first and only transgender of color invited as a guest advocate to The White House meeting on Women and HIV;” working as an outreach worker and group facilitator with the Howard Brown Health Center; developing social events like the “Aging As We Are” program for the LGBT senior community; and appearing in a variety of PSAs, documentaries, and exhibitions that speak to living and aging with HIV, including The Center Halsted’s “Aging POZitively: The Story of Three Older Adults Living With HIV.” She is a project interviewer for the Transgender HIV Behavioral Survey, a pilot study funded by CDC and RTI to gather data on HIV behavioral risk factors for African American and Latino Transgender females, and is currently in her third semester at Olive Harvey College, where she is holding down a 4.0 average.
Mark Brennan-Ing, PhD (New York, NY) a Senior Research Scientist with ACRIA, conducts behavioral research on depression, social supports, and spirituality among older adults living with HIV. Research interests include: coping and adjustment to age-related sensory impairment, the roles of religion and spirituality in adaptation to chronic illness, and caregiving among older LGBT adults. He is President of the New York State Society on Aging, a Fellow of the Gerontological Society of America, and Board Member of the New York Association on HIV over Fifty. Recognized for his work by the Hunter-Brookdale Center on Aging, Pride Senior Network, and the New York State Office for the Aging, he received his doctoral degree in Applied Developmental Psychology from Fordham University. Co-Principal Investigator on Growing Older in New York City in the 1990s, he has authored over 50 peer-reviewed articles, chapters and books, and is the Book Review Editor for the Journal of Religion, Spirituality and Aging.
Mary Butler-Washington, BS (Durham, NC) earned her BS degree in Psychology from South Carolina State University and is currently working toward a Master’s degree in Mental Health Counseling. She has worked in the field of HIV/AIDS at Duke University Partners In Caring for 10 years, and is currently providing HIV/ AIDS testing in substance abuse centers in the Raleigh, North Carolina, area. Prior to working at Duke she was a case manager for the severely persistently mentally ill population. She has lived with HIV/AIDS since 1996 and is an advocate for those living with the disease. She was born and raised in Orangeburg, South Carolina, and has resided in the Raleigh-Durham area for at least 30 years.
Charles A. Emlet, PhD, ACSW (Tacoma/Seattle, WA) is Professor of Social Work at the University of Washington Tacoma; Adjunct Associate Professor of Social Work with the School of Social Work, University of Washington Seattle; and affiliate faculty with the University of Washington Center for AIDS Research. His areas of research include older persons with HIV/AIDS and issues of stigma and service delivery for persons living with HIV/AIDS. In addition to authoring or co-authoring 40 journal articles and book chapters, he is co-author of In Home Assessment of Older Adults: An Interdisciplinary Approach, 2nd edition (Pro Ed Publishers, 2007), and editor of HIV/AIDS and Older Adults: Challenges for Individuals, Families and Communities (Springer, 2004). He currently serves on the editorial boards for the Journal of Gerontological Social Work and the Journal of HIV/AIDS and Social Services, and on the Governor’s Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS for the state of Washington.
Tonya Green (Hattiesburg, MS) is the Director of Social Services and the Program Manager for the Ryan White Programs (Part C and Part D) at Southeast Mississippi Rural Health Initiative, Inc. in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, and has seven years of clinical and administrative experience in HIV/AIDS care. Tonya recently participated in a HRSA-funded research project — Exploring Awareness, Attitudes, and Preferences for HIV Testing among Minority Women in Rural Mississippi: Qualitative Research to Inform Development of HIV Testing Interventions — administered by HealthHIV (formerly CAEAR Foundation). Tonya is a member of the Association of Nurses in AIDS Care (ANAC) and is a board member for AIDS Services Coalition and the Mississippi HIV/AIDS Care and Services Planning Council.
Perry N. Halkitis, PhD (New York, NY) is Associate Dean for Research and Doctoral Studies, Professor of Applied Psychology and Public Health, and Director of the Center for Health, Identity, Behavior & Prevention Studies at the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development, New York University and is internationally recognized for his work examining the intersection between HIV, drug abuse, and mental health. An author and editor of several volumes and more than 100 peer-reviewed academic manuscripts, Dr. Halkitis’s research, conducted on the hyphen of theory-practice, has been funded by the National Institutes of Health, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, New York City Department of Health & Mental Hygiene, New York State AIDS Institute, United Way, the New York Community Trust, and American Psychological Foundation. Dr. Halkitis is a fellow of The New York Academy of Medicine, The Society of Behavioral Medicine, and the American Psychological Association.
Richard J. Havlik, MD, MPH (Bethesda, MD) is a physician/epidemiologist who has been consulting with ACRIA on issues of comorbidities in older persons with HIV. Previously, he was Chief of the Laboratory of Epidemiology, Demography, and Biometry at the National Institute on Aging, part of the National Institutes of Health. He directed a comprehensive program of research into the determinants and correlates of aging and age-associated diseases.
Margaret Hoffman-Terry, MD, FACP, AAHIVM (Allentown, PA) is a Clinical Associate Professor of Medicine at the Milton S. Hershey Medical Center of the Pennsylvania State University College of Medicine. She attended Temple University School of Medicine and then completed an internal medicine residency at Lehigh Valley Hospital and an infectious diseases fellowship at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital. Since 1995 she has been caring for patients at the AIDS Activities Office of Lehigh Valley Hospital, Allentown, PA, a Ryan White funded clinic serving almost 700 adults living with HIV. She is the secretary of the National Board of the American Academy of HIV Medicine and her research interests include HIV/ HCV co-infection and HIV and Aging.
Malcolm D. John, MD (San Francisco, CA) is director of the 360: The Positive Care Center at UCSF and its Men of Color Program; a consultant at AIDS Project of the East Bay; and former chair of the HIV Advisory Board of Brown & Toland Medical Group. An expert in infectious diseases, his academic interests include optimizing the care of HIV-positive African Americans — including access to clinical services for those who are underserved — and differences in coinfections among HIV-positive African Americans. A growing focus is the optimal management of aging with HIV and disparities and differences between aging HIV-positive African Americans and the general positive population. He earned his medical degree at Harvard University, his MPH at the University of California at Berkeley, and completed an infectious disease fellowship at UCSF. His awards include the Robert Wood Johnson Harold Amos Faculty Development Award and the Black Coalition on AIDS Naomi Jay Lifetime Achievement Award.
Ronald S. Johnson (Washington, DC) is the Vice President of Policy & Advocacy at AIDS UNITED and has over 30 years of experience in non-profit program planning and development, non-profit administration and management and public policy development and advocacy. Prior to joining AIDS UNITED in 2006, Mr. Johnson served as Associate Executive Director of Gay Men’s Health Crisis, where he managed public policy, advocacy and government relations functions and served as a member of the senior management. Prior to coming to GMHC in 1997, he served for five years in the New York City Mayor’s Office as the first Citywide Coordinator for AIDS Policy. Mr. Johnson also has served as the executive director of the Minority Task Force on AIDS; on numerous boards of directors, including Gay Men’s Health Crisis, Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, and the NAMES Project; and was a member of the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS from 1996-2001.
Amy Justice, MD, PhD (West Haven, CT) is Professor of Medicine and Associate Professor of Public Health at Yale University School of Medicine and Section Chief of General Medicine at VA Connecticut. She has been the Principal Investigator of the Veterans Aging Cohort Study for more than a decade and studies how aging, substance use, comorbid disease, and treatment toxicity influence patient outcomes in HIV infection.
Stephen Karpiak, PhD (New York, NY) After a 25 year research career on the faculty of Columbia University Medical School, Stephen Karpiak conducted community HIV/AIDS work and was an Executive Director twice before joining ACRIA in 2002. At ACRIA he conducted and published seminal research on older adults with HIV which was the basis for the historic 1000 person cohort study ROAH (Research on Older Adults with HIV). He directs an ongoing study — ROAH-London — at Chelsea Westminster Hospital and is now comparing transnational data between the US and UK. He and his colleagues also recently completed a study of almost 200 older adults at GMHC. His work recently led to his appointment to the faculty of New York University College of Nursing.
Richard Kearns (Los Angeles, CA) is a 58-year-old gay man & long-term (more than 20 years) AIDS survivor living in Los Angeles. A poet, journalist and director of the recent “LA City Grassroots Elder HIV/AIDS Advocacy Summit & New Media Training,” he considers his inter-community advocacy and public advocacy coaching (HIV/AIDS, HIV/AIDS & aging, medical cannabis, gay rights, public health, social justice issues) to be as much of a part of his HIV treatment regimen as his big pharma HAART meds, as much as his qigong exercises, as much as his daily medical cannabis use, as much as his weekly public testimony before the LA city council. “It’s what I do to stay alive,” he says. His blog – a cultural activist’s site with intended social, artistic & political impact, aims to seek out, collect & publish accounts, traditional & anecdotal, textual & multimedia’d, objective and subjective, about life for elder HIVers/PWAs & their kith & kin: http://havvacc.wordpress.com .
Nancy A. Orel, PhD, LPC (Bowling Green, OH) is an associate professor and director of the Gerontology Program at Bowling Green State University. Her research focuses on multigenerational caregiving families; grandparent-grandchild relationships; the needs and concerns of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender older adults; and HIV/AIDS, including the extent to which personnel at Aging Network Organizations and AIDS Service Organizations are prepared to address the unique HIV/AIDS related needs and concerns of older adults and the availability of evidence-based HIV behavioral interventions that specifically address older adults. Among other projects, Dr. Orel and her colleagues at BGSU’s Gerontology Program – in collaboration with BGSU’s HIV/AIDS Prevention Education Program – have coordinated the “No One is Immune” project, providing local HIV/AIDS prevention education programs for older adults in partnership with community organizations.
Frank Palella, MD (Chicago, IL) is Professor of Medicine in the Division of Infectious Diseases at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, Chicago. He has been caring for patients with HIV/AIDS for over twenty years and has published widely in peer-reviewed medical journals on diverse aspects of HIV disease including the impact of effective antiviral therapy to treat HIV as well as the long term complications encountered among treated persons. He serves as a principal investigator for several large ongoing studies sponsored by the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that involve thousands of HIV-infected persons. Dr. Palella is also the personal physician of one of the individuals profiled in The Graying of AIDS.
Elizabeth Randall-David, RN, PhD (Durham, NC) is a medical anthropologist and nurse who has worked in the health care field for 40 years. She has clinical, research and teaching experience in the areas of women’s health, chronic illness, cross cultural health care, rural health and HIV/AIDS. She has served as the director of a community based AIDS Service Organization in Florida; was Director of Project REACH, a federally funded SPNS (Special Project of National Significance) project designed to increase access to HIV services for people of color in rural areas of North Carolina; and has consulted on evaluations of HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment projects in Florida, Missouri, New Jersey, Texas, New Mexico, Georgia, and North Carolina. Dr. Randall-David was written three books on topics including organizational cultural competency, culturally competent HIV counseling and education, and working with culturally diverse communities and clients.
Jeanine Reilly, RNC, LNHA (Newark, NJ) is the executive director of Broadway House for Continuing Care, New Jersey’s temporary residence and care-giving facility for people living with HIV/AIDS, an affiliate of University Hospital/UMDNJ, and the community-based organizational partner of The Graying of AIDS. She has a longstanding history of educating and networking around HIV/AIDS and aging issues in the nursing profession. She has served as a member of NAHOF, the National Association of HIV Over Fifty.
www.broadwayhouse.org
J. Edward Shaw (New York, NY) has participated in hundreds of HIV/AIDS symposia, conferences, and workshops at both community and government levels. Over the past decade he has served in multiple leadership capacities, including board member to the National Association on HIV Over 50; Community Co-Chair(s) of the HIV Health and Human Services Planning Council of New York and the New York State Prevention Planning Group. Currently he serves as Chairmen to the New York Association on HIV Over 50, and the Consumer Advisory Board at GMHC. Other roles include the New York City Commission on HIV/AIDS, the National HIV/AIDS & Aging Awareness Day Steering Committee; the Aging, HIV/AIDS and GRAY Panthers Committee (s) at the United Nations. He is a recipient of numerous awards including the President’s Call to Service Award, the United Hospital Fund’s Volunteer Achievement Award in New York City, National Minority AIDS Council: Unsung Heroes Award.
David E. Vance, PhD (Birmingham, AL) is an Associate Professor in the School of Nursing, a scientist in both the Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center and the Center for AIDS Research, and has an appointment in the Department of Psychology, working closely with the Edward R. Roybal Center for Translational Research in Aging and Mobility at UAB. Dr. Vance received his Ph.D. in Developmental Psychology at UAB and completed three years of a NIA postdoctoral fellowship at the Edward R. Roybal Center for Translational Research in Aging and Mobility studying cognitive aging, mobility, and cognitive remediation therapy. His research programs focus on cognitive remediation therapy and aging with HIV, including the NIMH-funded “Chronicity of HIV and Aging on Neuropsychological and Everyday Performance,” which investigates the synergistic effects of aging with HIV on cognitive functioning and everyday functioning. He currently has over 100 peer-reviewed publications in addition to numerous book chapters and book reviews.
Adele Webb, PhD, RN, AACRN, DPNAP, FAAN (Akron, OH), an HIV nurse since 1989, has experience as not only a pediatric nurse practitioner but also a graduate faculty member at the University of Akron. A past president of the Association of Nurses in AIDS Care, she now serves as its first Executive Director. Dr. Webb is well published in the area of HIV and has received extensive funding in the area of HIV and stigma. Her research and clinical practice spans many countries including Botswana, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Lesotho, Swaziland, South Africa, Cuba and India. She is a Robert Wood Johnson Nurse Executive Fellow; a Fellow in the International Council of Nurses Global Nursing Leadership Institute; a Distinguished Practitioner in the National Academies of Practice; and a fellow in the American Academy of Nursing. In 2010, Dr. Webb received the prestigious Nicholas Andrew Cummings Award for extraordinary contributions to interprofessional health care.
Richard Wolitski, PhD (Atlanta, GA) is Deputy Director for Behavioral and Social Science at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Division of HIV/AIDS Prevention. For more than 20 years, he has studied HIV-risk behavior and interventions to reduce this risk in a wide range of populations including gay, bisexual, and other men who have sex with men, injection drug users and their sex partners, commercial sex workers, incarcerated men, homeless persons, and people living with HIV. Dr. Wolitski’s work has been informed by his own experience living with HIV and has provided important insights into the damaging effects of HIV stigma and discrimination. He is an author of more than 100 scientific publications and has co-edited three books. Dr. Wolitski received his PhD in community psychology from Georgia State University and his master’s degree in psychology from California State University Long Beach.