Rutgers School of Public Health dean, Perry N. Halkitis, has been named the 2021 PROUD Leadership Award recipient by Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick.
The PROUD Leadership Award recognizes and honors community leaders, members, and RWJBaranabas Health leadership who have a made tremendous contributions and outstanding commitments to advancing the healthcare needs of LGBTQ+ people and populations.
“I am honored to be receiving the 2021 PROUD Leadership Award,” says Halkitis, who is also the founding editor of Annals of LGBTQ Public & Population Health and the director of the Center for Health, Identity, Behavior & Prevention Studies.
Halkitis is a public health psychologist, infectious disease epidemiologist, researcher, educator, and advocate who for three decades has focused his research on the emergence, prevention, and treatment of infectious diseases, specifically, HIV, HPV, and other sexually transmitted infections among LGBTQ+ people and populations.
“Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital and RWJBaranabas Health are committed to the health and wellbeing of LGBTQ+ people and populations and understand that a purely biomedical model has proven ineffective in combatting health disparities experienced by LGBTQ+ people, especially those whose sexuality and gender intersect with their other marginalized identities such as race, ethnicity, nation of birth, and economic status. It continues to be the mission of my research, teaching, and advocacy, to advance health equity among all LGBTQ+ people, demand that healthcare systems capture sexual orientation and gender identity data, and advocate for the understanding that the LGBTQ+ population is not monolithic,” he adds.
The award will be presented to Halkitis on Friday, October 15, 2021.