Jeffrey Escoffier, Health Official and Scholar of Gay Theory, Dies at 79
nytimes.comJeffrey Escoffier, whose remarkably varied career included helping to shape public health campaigns in New York City and writing extensively on gay identity and how it has been influenced by gay pornography and other factors, died on May 20 in Brooklyn.
He was 79. His family said the cause was complications of a fall he took while on his way to teach a class at the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research.
New Yorkers encountered Mr. Escoffier’s work on trains, buses and elsewhere for years, although few knew it. From 1999 to 2015 he was the director of health media and marketing for New York City’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, which meant that he was directly involved in numerous public health campaigns.
Among other things, he arranged one of the more unusual photography sessions on record. It was for a 2004 poster campaign emphasizing that littering and feeding pigeons and squirrels worsened the city’s rat infestation.
