Al Ballesteros is the President & Chief Executive Officer of JWCH Institute, Inc. a Los Angeles based non-profit, Federally Qualified Community Health Center. Al Ballesteros is also a Commissioner and past Co-Chair of the Los Angeles County Commission on HIV, appointed by the LA County Board of Supervisors.
Faculty & Advisory Board
Sean Cahill, Ph.D.
Sean Cahill, PhD is Director of Health Policy Research at the Fenway Institute, Affiliate Associate Clinical Professor of Health Sciences at Northeastern University, and Adjunct Associate Professor of the Practice in Health Law, Policy and Management at Boston University School of Public Health. Cahill serves on the Massachusetts Special Legislative Commission on LGBT Aging, and is Associate Editor at LGBT Health. He is lead author of “Sexual and Gender Minority Health in the COVID-19 Pandemic: Why Data Collection and Combatting Discrimination Matter Now More than Ever,” published this month in the American Journal of Public Health.
Timothy Cavanaugh, MD
Dr. Tim Cavanaugh worked as the Medical Director for the Transgender Health Program at Fenway Health from 2012 until 2018. Prior to joining the team at Fenway Health, Dr. Cavanaugh worked for 18 years as medical director and staff physician at Family Health Services/Comprehensive Community Action Program in Cranston, Rhode Island where he began formal outreach to transgender patients in coordination with the local transgender support organization. He has been working with transgender patients for ten years.
Julia Crouch, MPH
Julia Crouch is the Project Manager and LGBTQ Liaison for the Seattle Children’s Center for Diversity and Health Equity. In collaboration with the Seattle Children’s Gender Clinic (SCGC), she conducts outreach and training regarding gender affirming care and systems, both within the Seattle Children’s system and more broadly throughout the Pacific Northwest region.
Jeffrey S. Crowley
Jeffrey S. Crowley is a Distinguished Scholar and Program Director of Infectious Disease Initiatives at the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law at Georgetown Law. He also serves as an Adjunct Professor of Law. Mr. Crowley is a leading expert on HIV and disability policy.
Katharine B. Dalke MD, MBE
Katharine Dalke, MD MBE is an psychiatrist who specializes in the mental health of adolescents and adults who are LGBTQ or have intersex traits. She developed the LGBTQ Clinic at the Pennsylvania Psychiatric Institute and co-founded the integrated Gender Health Clinic at the Penn State Health Hershey Children’s Hospital. Dr. Dalke is an assistant professor in the departments of Psychiatry and Behavioral Health and Humanities at the Penn State College of Medicine, where she also directs the Office for Culturally Responsive Health Care Education. This office focuses on creating curriculum and learning environment that not only prepare learners to provide equitable, responsive care to all patients, and but are also responsive to and inclusive of the experiences of students.
John Davis, PhD, MD
John A. Davis, PhD MD, is the Associate Dean for Curriculum, and is an Associate a Professor of Medicine in the Division of Infectious Diseases, both at the University of California, San Francisco. He graduated from Harvard College with an AB in Chemistry, and from Boston College with a PhD in Bioinorganic Chemistry. He received …
Tri Do, MD, MPH, FACP
Tri Do, MD, MPH, FACP, AAHIVS is a Medical Director at HealthRIGHT 360 and an Assistant Professor of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. Dr. Do served on the board of the Gay and Lesbian Medical Association (GLMA) for over a decade and is a former president.
Emilia Dunham
Emilia Dunham is the Manager of Special Projects at the Office of Behavioral Health at MassHealth (the Massachusetts Office of Medicaid), where she leads efforts to support services and care coordination for homeless and justice-involved populations.
Kristen Eckstrand, MD, PhD
Dr. Eckstrand is a board-certified child & adolescent psychiatrist and Clinical Assistant Professor at the Western Psychiatric Hospital of UPMC. Dr. Eckstrand holds an M.D. and Ph.D. in neuroscience from Vanderbilt University, and is internationally recognized for their leadership supporting the health of LGBTQ communities. Dr. Eckstrand has published four textbooks and numerous peer-reviewed papers on the mental and physical health needs of LGBTQ communities, including the training of healthcare professionals to provide affirming and responsible care to LGBTQ individuals. Dr. Eckstrand founded the Vanderbilt Program for LGBTQ Health, the second LGBTQ-focused program at an academic health center in the country, co-directs the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine’s LGBTQ Health elective, and speaks nationally on the importance of diversity and identity in health.
Sheldon D. Fields, PhD, RN, FNP-BC, AACRN, FAANP, FNAP, FAAN
Dr. Fields is founder and CEO of “The S.D.F Group, LLC”, which is a health innovation consultant company. He has 29 years of experience in the health sector as an educator, researcher, clinician, administrator, consultant, health policy specialist, and entrepreneur / business owner. Dr. Fields is a well-known and respected HIV/AIDS prevention research scientist with a significant focus on young men of color. He has held academic and administrative positions at several institutions and is a former academic dean.
Michelle Forcier, MD, MPH
Michelle Forcier is an Associate Professor of Pediatrics and Assistant Dean of Admissions at the Brown University Alpert Medical School. She received her medical degree from the University of Connecticut School of Medicine, Pediatric residency at University of Utah, obtained a Master’s in Public Health and completed a Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars fellowship and Preventive Medicine residency at the University of North Carolina. She has been providing adolescent health services, specializing in sexual health care since 1997.
Robert Garofalo, MD, MPH
Dr. Garofalo is an associate professor of Pediatrics and Preventative Medicine at Northwestern University Fienberg School of Medicine. He is also an attending physician at Children's Memorial Hospital where he directs the Adolescent/Young Adult HIV Program. Dr. Garofalo is a national authority on LGBT health issues, adolescent sexuality, and HIV clinical care and prevention.
Marcy Gelman, NP
As a primary care provider, Ms. Gelman has cared for HIV/AIDS patients since 1991 both in Africa and in the United States. At Fenway Health, she was the first provider caring for transgender identified individuals and for five years served as the Director of the Transgender Clinical Care Committee. As Fenway’s Associate Director of Clinical Research, Ms. Gelman has focused her clinical and professional experience in training clinical research staff in the area of biomedical HIV Prevention modalities.
Cynthia Gomez, PhD
Dr. Cynthia A. Gómez was recently conferred as Professor Emerita in Health Education, and leaves her legacy as founding director of the Health Equity Institute at San Francisco State University.
Alex Gonzalez, MD
Alex Gonzalez, MD, MPH is the Medical Director at Fenway Health, where he oversees a staff of over 70 physicians, physician assistants, nurse practitioners, nurses, medical assistants, and program staff in the delivery of medical care to Fenway’s approximately 31,000 patients.
Chris Grasso, MPH
Chris Grasso serves as Fenway’s Associate Vice President for Health Informatics and Data Services. She has over 20 years of experience working in the healthcare, public health, research and technology fields. Under her leadership, Fenway has been an early adopter of Health Information Technology (HIT) and she has developed tools to improve data capture and support clinical decision-making.
Richard E. Greene, MD, MHPE
Richard E. Greene, MD, MHPE is an Associate Professor of Medicine at NYU School of Medicine. Dr. Greene serves as the Faculty Director of Health Disparities Education at NYU School of Medicine through the Office of Diversity Affairs, and in this role oversees the inclusion of Bias, Diversity, Health Disparities, and LGBTQ+ topics into the culture and curriculum of NYU’s medical center and educational programs. He also serves as an Associate Program Director for the Internal Medicine/Primary Care Residency Program and presents extensively on many Primary Care topics including the musculoskeletal physical exam, foundations of primary care medicine, and LGBTQ+ healthcare disparities. Dr. Greene is the Medical Director for the Pride Health Center at NYC H+H/Bellevue Hospital.
Scott Hadland, MD, MPH
Scott Hadland is pediatrician, and an adolescent medicine and addiction specialist at Boston Medical Center and Boston University School of Medicine. He holds triple board certification in General Pediatrics, Adolescent Medicine, and Addiction Medicine. Dr. Hadland’s clinical and research interests focus on adolescent and young adult substance use disorder prevention and treatment, including among LGBTQQI+ youth. As part of these efforts, he seeks to improve education on competent adolescent health care to pediatricians in the US and beyond.
Cecilia (Cec) Hardacker, MSN, RN, CNL
Cec Hardacker, MSN, RN, CNL is the Director of Education at Howard Brown Health, an LGBTQ-centric community health center in Chicago, is an adjunct instructor at Rush University College of Nursing and regular lecturer at Rosalind Franklin Medical College. Originally hired as trainer of the HRSA-funded Nurses’ Health Education About LGBT Elders (HEALE) cultural competence curriculum, Cec has been instrumental in growing the department of education and developing curricula for multidisciplinary teams of health care professionals. Now part of the Center for Education, Research and, Advocacy (ERA), Cec has developed broad evidence-based and community-informed curricula focused on LGBTQ health and best practices.
Lisa B. Hightow-Weidman, MD, MPH
Lisa B. Hightow-Weidman, MD, MPH is a Professor of Medicine in the Institute for Global Health and Infectious Diseases and a Professor of Health Behavior in the Gillings School of Global Public Health at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill (UNC). Dr. Hightow-Weidman is the director of the Behavior and Technology Lab (BATLab) at UNC and is an expert in the development, implementation and evaluation of digital health interventions (DHIs) to address the HIV Care Continuum for adolescents and young adults, particularly among sexual and gender minority (SGM) populations.
Ruben Hopwood, MDiv, PhD
Dr. Ruben Hopwood, MDiv, PhD, is a licensed psychologist (MA 10733) with 15 years experience working with and for the gender diverse community in clinical work and through professional education and training of medical and mental health professionals. He is the Founder and Director of the Cambridge, Massachusetts firm, Hopwood Counseling & Consulting, LLC, as well as a Visiting Researcher at The Danielsen Institute at Boston University.
Whitney Irie, PhD, MSW
Whitney Irie, PhD, MSW is a lecturer on Population Medicine in the Department of Population Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute. Her primary research focuses on preexposure prophylaxis (PrEP) access and implementation, particularly for Black Women in the United States. Dr. Irie utilizes a community-empowerment and practice-guided framework to identify mechanisms and processes at the structural, interpersonal, and individual levels to improve, promote, and protect the sexual health of Black women, with a specific focus on Black women in the Midwest, South, and rural areas.
Kevin Kapila, MD
Dr. Kevin Kapila has been a primary care provider at Fenway Health since 2002 and the Medical Director of Behavioral Health at Fenway since 2005. He is board certified in Internal Medicine and Psychiatry and a HIV certified specialist through the American Academy of HIV Medicine.
JoAnne Keatley, MSW
JoAnne Keatley received a Master of Social Welfare degree from the University of California, Berkeley. At UCSF since 1999, she directed the Center of Excellence for Transgender Health, a capacity building and technical assistance center until 2016. She is not the Director Emeritus of the Center.
Rita Lee, MD
Rita Lee, MD is an Associate Professor in the Division of General Internal Medicine at the University of Colorado School of Medicine. She received her medical degree at the University of California, Los Angeles and completed Internal Medicine Residency training at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation.
Kenneth Mayer, MD
Dr. Mayer is a Professor at Harvard Medical School and the Harvard School of Public Health, and Attending Physician at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston and Director of HIV Prevention Research there. He is the founder, Co-Chair and Medical Research Director of The Fenway Institute, the research, training and health policy division of Fenway Health, the largest ambulatory facility caring for HIV-infected patients in New England.
Gal Mayer, MD
Dr. Gal Mayer is the former Medical Director of the Callen-Lorde Community Health Center, a New York City health center with a mission to meet the healthcare needs of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender communities. He is a board-certified internist and AAHIVM-certified HIV Specialist.
Molly McHenry, BSN, FNP
Molly McHenry obtained her BSN and FNP degrees at Columbia University. She began her nursing career as a staff nurse on an HIV/AIDS floor at Cornell Hospital in Manhattan in 2010.
Kathy McNamara, RN
Ms. McNamara has been with the National Association of Community Health Centers (NACHC) for 19 years and is currently serving as the Assistant Director of Clinical Affairs. She is particularly focused on the design and implementation of culturally and linguistically appropriate care that is patient centered and value added from the patient’s perspective.
Leandro Mena, MD, MPH
Leandro Mena, MD, MPH, is a clinician-researcher and public health advocate with expertise in the prevention and clinical management of sexually transmitted diseases (STD) and the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and STD/HIV prevention research. He is founding chair of the department of population health science at the University of Mississippi Medical Center John D. Bower School of Population Health and Professor of Medicine in the division of Infectious Diseases, Directs the Center for HIV/ADIS Research, Education & Policy at the Myrlie Evers-Williams Institute for Elimination of Health Disparities, and serves as the STD Medical Director for the state of Mississippi.
Carmen Milagros Vélez Vega, PhD., MSW.
Dr. Vélez Vega completed a PhD. in Social Policy Research and Analysis, Graduate School of Social Work, at the University of Puerto Rico Rio Piedras Campus, and a MSW, and BSW from Florida State University School of Social Work.
Brian Mustanski, Ph.D
Brian Mustanski, Ph.D. is tenured Professor of Medical Social Sciences at Northwestern University, Director of the Institute for Sexual and Gender Minority Health and Wellbeing, and Co-Director of the Third Coast Center for AIDS Research (CFAR). The majority of his research focuses on the health and development of LGBTQ youth and the application of new media and technology to sexual health promotion and HIV prevention. He has been a Principal Investigator of over $60 million in federal and foundation research and training awards.
Bisola Ojikutu, MD MPH
Bisola Ojikutu MD MPH is an infectious disease physician who has dedicated her career to overcoming racial and ethnic inequity experienced by people living with or at risk for HIV. Dr. Ojikutu is an Associate Professor of Medicine and Global and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School and an Associate Physician within the Division of Global Health Equity at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. She is also a faculty member within the Infectious Disease Divisions at Brigham and Women’s and Massachusetts General Hospitals. Her research explores the impact of structural factors and norms/beliefs (e.g. racism/discrimination, immigration, medical mistrust, homonegativity) on HIV transmission and use of biomedical HIV prevention.
Johanna Olson-Kennedy, MD
Johanna Olson-Kennedy, MD is an Adolescent Medicine physician specializing in the clinical care of gender non-conforming children and transgender youth. Board certified in Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, Dr. Olson-Kennedy an Associate Professor of Clinical Pediatrics at the USC Keck School of Medicine. She is the Medical Director of The Center for Transyouth Health and Development at Children’s Hospital in Los Angeles, the largest transgender youth clinic in the United States and has been providing medical intervention for transgender youth and young adults including puberty suppression and cross sex hormones for the past fifteen years. Dr. Olson-Kennedy has appeared frequently on national television, and spoken all over the country to educate providers, parents, and other communities about the needs of transgender youth.
Rupa Patel MD, MPH
Dr. Rupa Patel MD MPH is the Founder and Director of the Washington University in St. Louis Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis for HIV Prevention (PrEP) program. The program provides clinical services, fosters research, and offers capacity building for organizations to integrate PrEP into routine health services. The program works closely with the Missouri state and local health departments to promote coordinated linkage to care and provider and community education activities. The program utilizes a pharmacy-based PrEP care model to serve the uninsured and underinsured. Dr. Patel directs the CDC Capacity Building Assistance Program that oversees technical assistance for HIV testing, PEP, and PrEP implementation for health departments in 12 Midwest states.
Evette Patterson, RN, BSN
Evette Patterson is the Nursing Director for Piedmont Health Services (PHS) located in Carrboro, North Carolina. She joined PHS in 1998. In 2004, she participated in a collaborative and was part of the implementation team to initiate Open Access Scheduling at the Carrboro Community Health Center, a focus on “Doing today’s work today”.
Benjamin Perkins, MA, MDiv
An avid social-justice practitioner, intellectual, and creative thinker, Benjamin Perkins is currently the Vice President of Multicultural Initiatives/Health Equity for the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association.
Tonia Poteat, PhD, PA-C, MPH
Tonia Poteat is an Assistant Professor of Social Medicine at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill (UNC), core faculty in the UNC Center for Health Equity Research, clinical preceptor for the Gender Affirming Clinic at UNC’s Student Health Action Coalition, and a Physician Assistant in the UNC Infectious Diseases Clinic. Her research, teaching, and clinical practice focus on HIV and LGBTQ health with particular attention to the role of intersectional stigma in driving health disparities.
Jennifer Potter, MD
Director of LGBT Population Health and Co-Chair of The Fenway Institute (TFI), Dr. Jennifer Potter has extensive clinical, medical education, research, and mentoring experience. She has designed and implemented numerous curricula for health professionals, focused on LGBT health, women’s health, sexual health, cancer survivorship, and care for people with disabilities. In addition, she co-edited two …
Kelvin Powell
Kelvin Powell is a community educator for prevention, education and screening at Fenway 16, where he leads outreach activities and conducts HIV and STI counseling and testing sessions for the Fenway Institute’s Prevention and Education Team. Mr. Powell has also served as a peer navigator and project coordinator at Fenway Health. Mr. Powell holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Mississippi, Hattiesburg.
Jane Powers, LICSW
Jane Powers, MSW, LICSW was Director of Behavioral Health at Fenway Health from 2013-2017 and continues to provide strategic oversight and supervision to the department; after briefly serving as interim CEO of Fenway in December 2017, Jane became Fenway’s interim Chief of Staff in late January 2018.
Asa Radix, MD, PhD, MPH, FACP
Dr. Radix is the Senior Director of Research and Education at the Callen-Lorde Community Health Center in New York and a clinical associate professor of medicine at NYU. Dr. Radix is board certified in internal medicine and infectious disease and completed postgraduate training in public health and epidemiology. Dr. Radix has presented both nationally and internationally on LGBT health issues and has assisted in developing guidelines in transgender health for multiple agencies including the World Health Organization & PAHO.
Sari Reisner, ScD
Sari Reisner, ScD is Director of Transgender Research and Assistant Professor in the Department of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, based in the Division of Endocrinology, Diabetes and Hypertension at Brigham and Women's Hospital, and Assistant Professor in the Department of Epidemiology at Harvard T.H. Chan School of public Health. He is also an Affiliated Research Scientist and Director of the Transgender Health Research Team at The Fenway Institute at Fenway Health.
Carlos E. Rodríguez-Díaz, PhD, MPHE, MCHES
Dr. Rodriguez-Diaz is a community health educator and a sociobehavioral scientist with experiences in health promotion, health policy, human rights, and health diplomacy. He has been working in the LGBT health field in Puerto Rico, United States of America, and the Caribbean for over 15 years and has collaborated in advocacy and research initiatives with governmental and non-governmental organizations.
Jason Schneider, MD
Dr. Jason Schneider is an Associate Professor at Emory University’s School of Medicine. He works in the Division of General Medicine and Geriatrics based at Grady Memorial Hospital in downtown Atlanta. He joined the Emory faculty after completing the Primary Care Internal Medicine residency at Emory in 2003.
Jillian Shipherd, PhD
Dr. Shipherd is currently a Clinical Research Psychologist at the Women’s Health Sciences Division of the National Center for PTSD at VA Boston Healthcare System and a Professor of Psychiatry at Boston University School of Medicine.
Mark Simone-Skidmore, MD
Dr Simone-Skidmore is an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and geriatrician at Mount Auburn Hospital. His academic and clinical areas of expertise focus on the care of older lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) adults.
Valerie E. Stone, MD, MPH
Dr. Valerie Stone is Vice Chair for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion of the Department of Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH). Dr. Stone is an academic general internist as well as an HIV/AIDS focused infectious disease specialist and a Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. She received her medical degree from Yale University School of Medicine and did her residency in internal medicine at Case Western Reserve - University Hospitals of Cleveland. She completed a health services research fellowship at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health and BWH, and an infectious disease fellowship at the Boston University School of Medicine program.
Julie Thompson
Julie joined Fenway Health in 2010 as a primary care provider and she specializes in LGBTQIA+ health, high-resolution anoscopy, and is an HIV Specialist through the American Academy of HIV Medicine. In 2018 she was named Medical Director of the Trans Health Program, previously serving as Co-Director since 2016, and works to guide Fenway’s multidisciplinary team approach to provide high-quality, informed care to the trans and gender diverse communities. She leads on-going education to support Fenway’s medical providers, as well as works interdepartmentally to ensure Fenway is a welcome space for all patients, regardless of how they identify. Julie provides trainings through the National LGBTQIA+ Health Education Center, and is core faculty on TransECHO and TransLINE, both of which are transgender medical consultative services for health care providers across the country. In April 2022 she was appointed to serve on the Board of Directors for the United States Professional Association of Transgender Health.
Nicholas Van Wagoner, MD, PhD
Nicholas Van Wagoner, MD PhD is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Medicine, Division of Infectious Diseases and Assistant Dean for Students in the University Of Alabama School Of Medicine. His clinical responsibilities include care for persons living with HIV at the 1917 Clinic, a university affiliated clinic serving over 3,000 clients. He is also the Director of the Gender and Sexual Health Clinic at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
Hector Vargas, JD
Hector Vargas, JD, is Executive Director of the Gay & Lesbian Medical Association, the world’s oldest and largest association of LGBT health care professionals working for equality in health care for LGBT people and LGBT health professionals. GLMA leverages the expertise of its professional membership though policy, advocacy and education programs to achieve its mission of LGBT health care equality. Vargas was previously the Deputy Director of the Education and Public Affairs Department for Lambda Legal, the national LGBT civil rights legal organization and key leadership roles in Lambda Legal’s education and communication strategies.
Ralph Vetters, MD, MPH
Dr. Vetters is the Medical Director of the Sidney Borum Jr. Health Center, a program of Fenway Health.
Darrell Wheeler, PhD, MPH, ACSW
Darrell P. Wheeler, PhD, MPH, ACSW is dean of the School of Social Welfare and Vice President for Public Engagement at the University at Albany SUNY. From 2016-17 he served as Interim Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs (University at Albany SUNY). Previously he was Dean School of Social Work Loyola University Chicago. Wheeler has also held academic positions at Hunter College, Columbia University, and the University of North Carolina – Greensboro.
Patrick Wilson, PhD
Patrick Wilson is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociomedical Sciences at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health and the Director of the SPHERE (Society, Psychology, and Health Research) Lab at Columbia University.
Kimberly Zieselman, JD
Kimberly Zieselman, JD is an intersex woman and Executive Director of interACT: Advocates for Intersex Youth, and has more than 25 years of experience in nonprofit advocacy. She served as Director of Government Relations for Boston Children’s Hospital where Kimberly earned the National Association of Children’s Hospitals Legislative Advocacy Award after leading the hospital’s first strategy-driven government relations campaign raising over $200 million in new Medicaid funding.
