This health care innovation — the first in the United States — will be made possible by a $2.5 million donation to Callen-Lorde by the Keith Haring Foundation. It is the largest private gift ever made to Callen-Lorde, and the largest donation made by the Keith Haring Foundation in its three decades of operation. The gift will establish The Keith Haring LGBTQ+ Health Equity Endowment, which will fund the Fellowship.
The Fellowship will be officially announced at Callen-Lorde’s Community Health Awards gala, to be held on Thursday, November 7 at Tribeca Rooftop in downtown Manhattan.
“Keith Haring was a visionary in the fight against HIV/AIDS, raising awareness, challenging stigma, and engaging hearts and souls through his art as a person living with HIV,” said Wendy Stark, Executive Director of Callen-Lorde Community Health Center. “The Keith Haring Foundation continues his legacy, and this landmark grant to Callen-Lorde will significantly impact culturally competent health care access for LGBTQ people for years to come.”
Callen-Lorde’s Nurse Practitioner Postgraduate Fellowship in LGBTQ+ Health will be the first in the nation. The project will address a lack of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) training for clinical providers at the national, state and local level. It will have large-scale impact by producing culturally competent providers who will then take the body of knowledge gained through their time in the program wherever they choose to practice after, and producing a guide that will assist other organizations to implement their own population-specific residency programs.
The Fellowship will have a home within Callen-Lorde’s brand-new site in Downtown Brooklyn, slated to open in 2020 at 40 Flatbush Avenue Extension. The fourth clinical site will be designed specifically to meet the considerations for a successful residency program. The space will allow Callen-Lorde to nearly double its capacity with an additional 25,000 square feet of space to provide critically needed healthcare services to LGBTQ+ New Yorkers, people living with HIV/AIDS, and the uninsured.
The Nurse Practitioner Postgraduate Fellowship is a timely effort that directly responds to the need for entry-to-practice training for advanced practice nurses statewide, as well as calls from the Institute of Medicine, National Institute of Health, American Medical Association and others for LGBTQ+ healthcare training.
