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Dr. Perry Halkitis will become the first openly gay dean of a major college in August, and he has big plans for the future of HIV research.
On a recent segment for New Jersey Television News, Dr. Perry Halkitis talks about the challenges faced by people living with HIV as well as his new post at Rutgers School of Public Health.
Halkitis also addressed the work he's accomplished around young gay and bisexual men saying, "I think that 35 years into the AIDS epidemic, we still define the health of young gay men by HIV alone. HIV is still a problem, there’s no doubt about it. Forty thousand new infections a year in the United States, primarily gay men, primarily young gay men, primarily young gay men of color. You look at places like Newark and New York City and that’s where the epidemic continues to exist."
He continued: "The work that I hope to bring here to New Jersey and to Rutgers is work that understands how the struggles of young people in 2017 differ from the struggles of my generation. When I was 18 years old in 1981, HIV was our primary presenting problem. If I was 18 years old now, HIV would still be a concern for me as a gay man, but finding a job, a place to live, finding work, having a career, those would be much bigger problems."
Watch the whole segment below:
