Marjorie Hill Takes Charge

By Keith Boykin, in sexuality
Thursday, November 2 2006, 1:14PM

GMHC's New CEO

Back in January we reported that Dr. Marjorie J. Hill had taken over the helm as the interim executive director of Gay Men's Health Crisis in New York. Today I am pleased to report that Marjorie Hill has been named the new chief executive officer at GMHC. I've known Marjorie for a little more than 10 years now, and she's always been a hero and an inspiration to me. I remember hearing her words in the documentary "All God's Children" and taking those words to heart.

I can think of few people who could do a better job at GMHC than Marjorie Hill. She has a long history in working with the agency. She served as a board member from 1994 to 1999, as board co-chair from 1999 to 2001, and as a senior manager from 2004 to 2006, when she was appointed Interim executive director. But she has wide experience outside of GMHC. She served as the assistant commissioner for the Bureau of HIV/AIDS at the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DOHMH) and she was appointed by former Mayor David Dinkins as director of the mayor’s office for the lesbian and gay community. With all that on her resume, I thought I should sit down and talk to her for an interview about the AIDS crisis, the black community and the gay community.

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INTERVIEW WITH DR. MARJORIE HILL

Keith Boykin: Congratulations on your new position.

Marjorie Hill: Thank you.

Keith Boykin: Are you excited?

Marjorie Hill: I am thrilled, ecstatic and eager to get on with the task at hand.

Keith Boykin: But you've had this position before, right?

Marjorie Hill: Actually I served as interim executive director for the past few months.

Keith Boykin: And you were the CEO too?

Marjorie Hill: No, I was interim executive director. And actually, I am GMHC’s first chief executive officer.

Keith Boykin: So this is something new.

Marjorie Hill: That’s right.

Keith Boykin: What do you plan on doing now that you’re CEO?

Marjorie Hill: It’s the 25th y ear of HIV and AIDS and in many ways things are dramatically different than the were in 1981.

Keith Boykin: And that’s when GMHC was founded?

Marjorie Hill: GMHC was founded in 1981. We are first in the fight. That’s our logo.

Keith Boykin: Ok.

Marjorie Hill: So here we are. This brand new organization. Gay Men's Health Crisis, organizing from within the community, challenging homophobia, stigma , discrimination, ignorance and fear.

Keith Boykin: And that’s 25 years ago.

Marjorie Hill: Yes. Fast forward to 2006. People are living longer. Medications are more widely available in the United States. There is some visibility around the LGBT community. And at the same time, Keith, we are still fighting homophobia, discrimination, stigma, denial and fear.

Keith Boykin: What does this mean for your agenda?

Marjorie Hill: One of the things that is significant about my appointment as a openly lesbian African American, the face of AIDS increasingly in the world looks like my face. It is a face of color. It is increasingly a face of women, and it is a face that is getting older.

Keith Boykin: Well you don’t look like you’re getting older.

Marjorie Hill: Oh, you’re so sweet...That's what you were supposed to say. That's why I paused.

Keith Boykin: [Laughter]

Marjorie Hill: And here at GMHC we are committed to following the epidemic, which means that people of color, particularly MSM of color, women and persons over 50 are the sub populations that we are going to create even more successful outreach prevention messages and effective treatment adherence strategies.

Keith Boykin: What’s the significance of these strategies to the local community?

Marjorie Hill: That’s a good question, Keith, and I’d be very interested in that answer. You know, I think GMHC has a long legacy of advocacy and high quality service. Marjorie Hill has a long established track record as a activist, a public health official, as a writer and a community organizer.

Keith Boykin: Do you think you’ll be able to get more African Americans involved in the fight against AIDS?

Marjorie Hill: I hope so. I certainly hope so. I’ve seen some of that already. We’ve had conversations with some traditional organizations. For example, we’ve done some work with the 100 Black Women. We’ve done work with some community based organizations that are not LGBT and not AIDS Service Organizations. We’ve weighed in on matters of significance to communities of color, with legitimacy. And that legitimacy is based on, in part, my 20 years of clinical and government experience, and many more years living as a person of color. But it’s also based on GMHC’s 25 years of success in providing services to people of color.

Today, three quarters of our clients are people of color. Twenty percent are women. Eighty five percent of our clients live at or below the federal poverty level.

Keith Boykin: And yet when people hear the words Gay Men's Health Crisis, the name evokes a different image?

Marjorie Hill: Funny you should ask that….I was just asked whether I would be interested in changing the name. Obviously that’s a board issue. GMHC is the name that we were founded under. It’s our historical root. It’s a legacy that, Keith, I am deeply proud of, so I embrace that name with pride, and with all the homage that it is due because GMHC paved the way for APLA and GMAD and for Whitman walker. GMHC was first in the fight.

And because we embraced it, because our founders embraced that name, we paved the way also for LGBT fundraising. There was no real significant lesbian and gay fundraising until GMHC had our "circus event" back in the 80s…We had our first AIDS Walk in 1986. And in those days it was difficult for us to get a permit to hold the event because folks were saying 'I don’t want all them people with AIDS walking around here'…And so we live in a world that has really been transformed in large measure because of the existence of an organization that was proudly, defiantly in your face, out about being gay. And Keith, I am just honored to carry that legacy forward.

Keith Boykin: So you expanding the services beyond AIDS?

Marjorie Hill: We do anti-poverty work. We do social justice work. HIV and AIDS has never been just about medicine. It wasn’t in 1981 and it’s not today. It’s about people needing housing. People needing universal health care access. It’s about women needing to be empowered. It’s about people who are lower class, working class, underclass being allowed to have the skills and education that will allow them to make a decent wage.

Keith Boykin: Where do you see the AIDS epidemic in New York City going in the coming years?

Marjorie Hill: Increasingly women and women of color in particular are at risk for HIV infection and we need to do a better job in educating girls and boys. The issue around gay men, particularly gay men of color. It is unconscionable, criminal that African American gay men may be as high as 1 in 2 infected with HIV.

Keith Boykin: Who’s responsible for that?

Marjorie Hill: Responsibility is an interesting word, Keith. Let me just finish my piece. We have women. Gay men of color. And then we have older persons. And the older persons fall into two categories. We have people who are aging, who still need support and services around safer sex. And then there are the newly infected.

In New York City, 16 percent of new infections this last quarter occurred in persons over 50. Thirty-five percent of our clients are over 50. It’s aging. So the other piece of that is that we need to get messages to persons over 50 who are not infected, prevention messages…And then the last area that we need to do more of, all of us. Everyone needs to know their status. Every sexually active person needs to know their status. We have to make testing more widely available to everyone, but especially to young people. Women, gay men of color, older persons, and testing for everyone. So that’s kind of my agenda.

Raise money to pay for that. Raise awareness so that there is more money, and engage communities, many communities, in dialogue that HIV is not over. Not for white gay men, not for women, not for young people, not for older people. It’s not over Keith…You know it, I know it….but America doesn’t know it….Chelsea has the highest incidence of HIV in the city of New York.

Keith Boykin: Really? Higher than Harlem?

Marjorie Hill: Higher than Harlem. We have a lot of work to do.

Keith Boykin: Let's go back to that responsibility question.

Marjorie Hill: Responsibility is an interesting word, Keith. Responsibility is really about shared responsibility. Government has responsibility because we need more funding. This whole Ryan White debacle is distracting us from prevention…The communities have responsibility. We need to do a better job of sharing best practices between communities. There are some things that work really well in the API communities. There are some things that work really well among young women of color. If HIV has taught us anything, it’s that one size does not fit all.

And then there is some responsibility within communities of color. It has been very challenging for some faith-based institutions to really talk about sexuality, embrace their members who are gay or lesbian, bisexual or transgender and do real, meaningful HIV/AIDS work.

I’d like to give you one example. I run a group here at GMHC for long-term survivors. It's [mostly] women of color, mostly over 45 with maybe two exceptions, it’s a group of about 12 women, they have been living with HIV for 10 years…one of the women in the group is a member of her church’s AIDS ministry. She is not out about her status as an HIV positive person. So I asked her why not and she said because they would treat me differently.

Keith it brings tears to my eyes telling you this story because here is a woman committed to her faith…Sees this as a mission and she can’t get comfort and support for her own diagnosis. An African American minister in a Baptist church, I just want to name it. Although obviously the Baptists don’t have a monopoly…

So that’s how I answer responsibility. There’s shared responsibility…What’s happening in sub-Sahara Africa is horrendous. But what’s happening in East New York and in the South Bronx is also pretty horrible. So we need to figure out. This responsibility question that you raise, again, there’s shared responsibility….Parents have responsibility. When they don’t tell their teenage children that uncle Eddie is in the hospital and dying of AIDS…And when those parents don’t give kids the information they need to protect themselves. When they don’t’ tell them about condoms. When they don’t give them the 411 about sexuality, those parents have responsibility.

Keith Boykin: One of the issues that has come up lately in the black gay community is the raw sex parties taking place. What do you think about that?

Marjorie Hill: There have always been risky behaviors and there have always been risky behaviors in group settings. Parties, bath houses, swingers, drive-ins…And I think we can focus on that and we do need to look at that, we are not talking about sex. We’re not talking about sex in schools. We’re not talking about sex in our faith-based institutions.

Doctors aren’t even talking about sex. I have never been asked if I would like an HIV test….I’m an educated person, been blessed to have health insurance, know a little about this stuff…But what about [the people who don’t have those resources]….There are risky behaviors happening right now as you and I are speaking and they’re not at somebody’s raw sex party…

Keith Boykin: And black people always talk about the down low too. What impact is that having?

Marjorie Hill: I’m gonna say again. One of the issues, and why I’m so pleased that my appointment here at GMHC...Social justice, discrimination, racism fuel HIV. Our society wants to pretend that it is honesty or lack thereof that fuels HIV. And while on an individual level honesty is very important. We [at GMHC] support and encourage disclosure…But HIV is not about any one community perpetrating a crime within their own community.

Keith Boykin: But that’s how it’s been portrayed with the down low.

Marjorie Hill: I try to talk about education in the schools, money for condoms…If more people are tested, then an individual’s honesty with one other individual becomes less of a factor. And I believe all people should be honest in their interactions. But we should not demonize any one behavior, any one community, or any one individual lie.

You know, one day I was doing a presentation on women of color and HIV. And sister came up to me and she said, 'Dr. Hill I just have to ask you one question. Isn’t it terrible if a man gives a woman HIV?' And I said it is terrible in this country when we don’t have the kind of education and prevention support when anybody contracts HIV. She said, 'yeah, yeah, yeah, but it’s terrible,' and I said, if someone contracts HIV from a man, from a woman, from a dirty needle, from a blood transfusion, from a needle prick in the hospital, from the womb, HIV is terrible. So Keith I refuse, and GMHC refuses to demonize any individual, any group, any sub-population for being involved in sexual activities.

Everyone who is sexually active needs to practice safer sex and everyone needs to be skilled in disclosure. Skilled in asking and skilled in answering. And we also need to have a community and a society that supports and embraces individuals for being who they are.

Keith Boykin: Do you support those HIV disclosure laws that make it a crime for an HIV positive people not to disclose their status?

Marjorie Hill: We do not. We have never done that.

Keith Boykin: What about condoms in prisons? And should inmates be tested?

Marjorie Hill: There is sex that is happening in correctional facilities and wherever there is sex there should be condoms…So that’s a no brainer.

Keith Boykin: Yes, but it’s a big deal for a lot of people.

Marjorie Hill: But it all boils down to sex. People don’t want to talk about sex in schools because they’re too young. They don’t want to talk about it in prisons because there might be gay sex. They don’t want to talk about it to women because they might empower them.

Keith Boykin: And what about inmates be tested?

Marjorie Hill: We are opposed to mandatory testing. We think testing should be made available to everyone who is sexually active. But that testing should take place in an informed consensual way and that informed consent should be meaningful and voluntary.

Keith Boykin: The battle over "names reporting" seems to have been fought and decided already. Is it a good idea for the government to collect names of people who test positive?

Marjorie Hill: New York state and New York City has been doing "names reporting" for several years now and the reality is that from a epidemiological perspective and a public health perspective it’s been documented that names reporting is more reliable. And one responsibility we have around public funds is to make sure that those funds go to where the greatest need is. You can’t tell where the greatest need is if you don’t have the best counting. The issue around the names is that people are worried about stigma and discrimination…That’s why there are laws. That’s why we believe in voluntary testing…

Keith Boykin: And what about the person who does not have health insurance and doesn't want to get tested because if he tests positive, he may never be able to get insurance.

Marjorie Hill: Everyone should know their status. [Dr. Hill then listed a number of places where people could go to get free or low-cost HIV testing.] They should go some place.

Keith Boykin: But this is not about paying for test. It’s about the fear that names reporting will allow a health insurance company to know their status and thus discriminate against them.

Marjorie Hill: There are challenges around that and that’s part of the reason why Ryan White was created. Ryan White was the insurer of last resort. So persons who don’t have health insurance there is coverage…I think what you’re asking Keith is, 'Do I find out what my status is and if I’m positive do I do what I need to do to provide me a certain quality of life. Or do I live on the hope that I’m not….and then find myself 5 years from now, 10 years from now to find out that I’m diagnosed with HIV and AIDS?' People need to know that they cannot be fired because they are HIV positive. People need to know that they can’t be put out of their homes. Their landlords can’t put them out….That is why we all need to know our status though...You don’t just give somebody a test result. You have a conversation about are you practicing safer sex….

Keith Boykin: Well, we've come to the end of the interview. Is there anything else you want to say?

Marjorie Hill: This is the 25th year and I certainly did not think that I would be working in HIV for this length of time and I certainly did not envision that I would be the CEO of the world’s first AIDS service organization, but I am totally committed to it, and I’m really excited about the opportunity to influence the discourse about HIV, the discourse about sexuality, the discourses about communities disproportionately impacted by HIV and other social challenges.

Keith Boykin: Well, thank you very much. And good luck.

Marjorie Hill: All right, Keith. Thanks so much.

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