Life

These 10 icons made healthcare more inclusive. Here’s how they did it

Queer leaders and allies have shaped not just the medical treatment of LGBTQ+ people but improved health care for all Americans.
By · Updated on September 8, 2023

The healthcare priorities of the LGBTQ+ community have come a long way since 1973, when Charles Silverstein successfully lobbied the American Psychiatric Association to declassify homosexuality as a mental disorder. It was the start of a movement that has remade the labyrinth American healthcare system.

Gay Men’s Health Crisis (founded in 1982) and the American Foundation for AIDS Research (1985) were among the early organizations to demand research, inclusive treatment, and medical access. But it’s the people behind these institutions who are the real heroes of equity in health care, a movement that’s building on this legacy and still gaining momentum today.

From turn-of-the-century scientists to the next generation of mental health advocates, queer leaders and allies inspired by their personal experiences to help others have shaped not just the medical treatment of LGBTQ+ people but improved health care for all Americans.

LGBTQ Nation celebrates some of our champions.

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Elizabeth Taylor

Elizabeth Taylor during AmFar's "Glitter and Be Giving" Gala at Pierre Hotel in New York City, on April 13, 1992.
Elizabeth Taylor during AmFar’s ‘Glitter and Be Giving’ Gala at Pierre Hotel in New York City, on April 13, 1992. Photo by Ron Galella via Getty Images

Compelled by compassion and bolstered by moral courage, Elizabeth Taylor became the first globally recognized celebrity AIDS activist beginning in the 1980s. This was due, in part, to the HIV diagnosis and eventual passing of her longtime friend and colleague actor Rock Hudson and her love for her many gay friends in Hollywood and beyond.

Her namesake charity, The Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation (ETAF), established in 1991, continues her vision of an AIDS-free world. The organization pursues human rights for people living with HIV and AIDS in the most marginalized and underserved populations, still decimated by the global pandemic.

“It’s bad enough that people are dying of AIDS, but no one should die of ignorance.”

Elizabeth Taylor (1932-2011)

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Alfred Kinsey

Researcher and author Dr. Aflred Kinsey, date unknown.
Researcher and author Dr. Aflred Kinsey, date unknown. Photo courtesy of Getty Images

American biologist, professor of entomology and zoology, and sexologist Dr. Alfred Charles Kinsey founded the Institute for Sex Research at Indiana University in 1948 (now known as the Kinsey Institute at Indiana University). His groundbreaking work included more than 18,000 interviews, which helped dispel myths about homosexuality to provide a more scientific and humane basis for society’s approach to sexual minorities in the United States.

“The heterosexuality or homosexuality of many individuals is not an all-or-none proposition.”

Alfred Kinsey (1895-1956)

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Audra Lorde

Audre Lorde at The Phillis Wheatley Poetry Festival on November 4, 1973.
Audre Lorde at The Phillis Wheatley Poetry Festival on November 4, 1973. Photo by Jackson State University via Getty Images

Poet and social activist Audre Lorde often explored the “theory of difference” in her works, which examined how race, age, sexuality, and class impact the quality of peoples’ lives. After her 1978 cancer diagnosis, Lorde wrote The Cancer Journals (1978), followed by A Burst of Light, which explored her experience as a patient and the complexities of treatment, sexuality, and emotional healing. Callen-Lorde, a network of LGBTQ+-welcoming health centers throughout New York City, is named in her honor.

“It is not our differences that divide us. It is our inability to recognize, accept, and celebrate those differences.”

Audre Lorde (1934-1992)

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Larry Kramer

Larry Kramer in his apartment in Manhattan, New York, on April 22, 2012.
Larry Kramer in his apartment in Manhattan, New York, on April 22, 2012. Photo by Melanie Burford For The Washington Post via Getty Images.

Author and AIDS activist Larry Kramer was one of the most pivotal voices in the early days of the AIDS crisis. In 1981, he gathered friends in his New York City apartment to discuss the health crisis that would later become known as HIV, which was just beginning to take the lives of gay men but largely was ignored by the mainstream medical establishment.

A year later, Gay Men’s Health Crisis was formed, a force in health care still. Kramer also inspired the 1987 founding of the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP), another organization that demanded research and greater access to treatment. Many of Kramer’s ideas, from expedited access to experimental treatments to patients taking control of their own care, revolutionized health care for all Americans to this day.

“The only way we’ll have real pride is when we demand recognition of a culture that isn’t just sexual. It’s all there – all through history we’ve been there; but we have to claim it, and identify who was in it, and articulate what’s in our minds and hearts and all our creative contributions to this earth.”

Larry Kramer (1935-2020)

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Sara Josephine Baker

Dr. Sara Josephine Baker, circa 1915.
Dr. Sara Josephine Baker, circa 1915. Photo by FPG/Hulton Archive/Getty Images

Dr. Sara Josephine Baker led the early movement for public health by establishing programs to prevent infant blindness and placing doctors and nurses in schools throughout New York City. In 1917, she became the first woman to earn a doctorate in public health from the New York University and Bellevue Hospital Medical College. Prevention, from depression to HIV, would later become a central theme in the fight for medical access and appropriate treatment.

“The way to keep people from dying from disease, it struck me suddenly, was to keep them from falling ill. Healthy people don’t die. It sounds like a completely witless remark, but at that time, it was a startling idea. Preventative medicine had hardly been born yet and had no promotion in public health work.”

Sarah Josephine Baker (1873-1945)

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Alex Sheldon

GLMA executive director Alex Sheldon. Photo courtesy of GLMA
GLMA executive director Alex Sheldon. Photo courtesy of GLMA

Alex Sheldon earned a master’s degree in International Human Rights with a concentration in Global Health Affairs from the University of Denver, and has championed the work of nonprofits, including Daylight, where they specialized in economic inclusion, and The Movement Advancement Project, a think tank that visualizes data about policies affecting Americans locally and nationally. Sheldon currently serves as interim executive director at Health Professionals Advancing LGBTQ Equality (GLMA). Founded in 1981, GLMA has become a leader in public policy and includes medical professionals, patients, families, and allies.

“The LGBTQ+ community has a longstanding history of fighting at the forefront of health crises. From the onset of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the 1980s to the recent mpox outbreak, LGBTQ+ people — and LGBTQ+ health professionals in particular — have met crisis after crisis not only with courage and resilience but by driving innovation and systemic change.

“If we are to create a future of equity in healthcare, the unique health needs of the LGBTQ+ community must be centered, and LGBTQ+ healthcare professionals can and should lead the way.”

Alex Sheldon

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Assistant Secretary for Health Admiral Rachel Levine

Assistant Secretary of Health Admiral Rachel Levine.
Assistant Secretary for Health Admiral Rachel Levine. Film still by Emily Geraghty for LGBTQ Nation

Admiral Rachel L. Levine is the 17th Assistant Secretary for Health for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the nation’s first transgender four-star officer. With a degree from Harvard College and Tulane University School of Medicine and training in Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine at the Mt. Sinai Medical Center in New York City, ADM Levine’s celebrated career focuses on the integration of physical and mental health.

ADM Levine is an accomplished speaker and author of several publications on the opioid crisis, adolescent medicine, eating disorders, and LGBTQ+ medicine.

“We need to improve the quality of care and the cultural competency of the care that our community faces. There’s a lack of access in terms of gender affirmation treatment for transgender youth and adults. We don’t have enough professionals that are experiencing this type of care, and we need to improve their training so that we have more professionals throughout the country.”

— ADM Rachel Levine, Assistant Secretary for Health

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Phill Wilson

Black AIDS Institute Founder Phill Wilson at the AIDS Monument groundbreaking on June 05, 2021, in West Hollywood, California. Photo by Emma McIntyre/Getty Images for Foundation for the AIDS Monument
Black AIDS Institute Founder Phill Wilson at the AIDS Monument groundbreaking on June 05, 2021, in West Hollywood, California. Photo by Emma McIntyre/Getty Images for Foundation for the AIDS Monument

Phill Wilson founded the Black AIDS Institute in 1999 after his own HIV diagnosis. Wilson recognized the disparity in access to HIV treatment and information for people of color. Through his nearly 20-year tenure leading the organization, Wilson helped establish a social support network and clinic in Los Angeles and national programs in training, leadership, and capacity-building for groups in underserved communities.

“It is absolutely imperative that we develop messages that resonate with the people we’re trying to reach and that those messages come from the folks who we’re trying to reach.”

Phill Wilson

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David Ernesto Munar

Howard Brown Health president and CEO David Ernesto Munar
Howard Brown Health president and CEO David Ernesto Munar. Photo courtesy of Howard Brown Health

Chicago’s Howard Brown Health president and CEO David Ernesto Munar is a driving force in the battle for equitable health care. Munar spent 23 years at the AIDS Foundation of Chicago before joining Howard Brown Health in 2014. Under his leadership, the nonprofit has expanded to include more than 10 health clinics throughout the city serving the city’s large and diverse queer community.

“It’s about making sure we do what we can to serve our patients with dignity and respect and improve their health and lives. As an organization, our mission is advocacy: trying to change the conditions for LGBTQ+ people and their families so they can reach their full potential.”

David Ernesto Munar

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Charles Silverstein

Charles Silverstein, circa 1992.
Charles Silverstein, circa 1992. Photo courtesy of Outwords

While a graduate student at Rutgers University in 1973, Charles Silverstein testified at the American Psychiatric Association (APA) to argue for the removal of homosexuality as a mental illness in the organization’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual. Stunningly, he succeeded along with the support of a group of activists who protested the organization’s outdated but stubborn stance that had been used to discriminate against a generation of gay men and lesbians.

But it wasn’t just Silverstein who accomplished this breakthrough. It was gay people themselves. Study after study was beginning to roll out, indicating that gay and lesbian people were just as well adjusted as their non-gay counterparts.

Silverstein’s impact can still be felt today as the APA “urges all mental health professionals to take the lead in removing the stigma of mental illness that has long been associated with homosexual orientations.” In 2011, Silverstein received the Gold Medal Award for Life Achievement in the Practice of Psychology from the APA.

“One generation always stands on the shoulders of the ones that came before.  And that’s as it should be. Every social movement is like that … Homosexuality was listed as a perversion, and we wanted that out. So there was a direction, and we weren’t going to be distracted by other movements that were certainly fair enough.”

Charles Silverstein (1935-2023)

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