Hetrick-Martin Institute in New York — which to this day still provides comprehensive services for LGBTQ+ youth — I would not have known about the medical care I was able to receive from the Montefiore Medical Center’s Adolescent AIDS Program in the Bronx.
I will always be grateful to Dr. Donna Futterman, who led the then-new focus on HIV and adolescents for decades until she recently retired.
She probably saved my life.I was 16 when I began working in the field of HIV peer education by volunteering to talk to LGBTQ+ youth hanging out at the piers in the West Village.
There was little training available back then and I learned a lot by reading The Body Positive magazine (which ended publication in 1999 and later became TheBody.com).