In the 1980’s, the South Bronx of my childhood was the epicenter for AIDS in New York City, with one of the highest AIDS infection rates in the city, if not the country. Even during the early stages of the epidemic, the disproportionate impact on the poor, on […]
American Playwright William Saroyan once said, “A man’s [or woman’s] ethnic identity has more to do with a personal awareness than with geography”. This is doubly true with Hispanics. Unintentionally, by choosing the descriptor “Hispanic” in the title of this post, I am making a personal choice as […]
Psychology is my professional field. Politics is my hobby. I’m a political news junkie and can name obscure pundits the way most sports fans can name the entire bench of the New York Knicks. This being an election year, I can essentially mainline my addiction. Yesterday, Republican presidential […]
I had the great fortune to visit Cuba as a US delegate of the American Public Health Association (APHA). I was struck by the beauty of the island, the warmth of the people and by the high sense of pride and adoration of heroes. Everywhere one turned you […]
Without any particular effort on my part, I seem to have achieved mythological status at my last place of employment. Apparently in a fit, I stood up on a table in the middle of a team meeting and announced how full of crap everyone was and resigned on the spot. […]
Last week’s buzzword at the International AIDS Conference is marriage. Not the gay marriage debate currently raging in the United States, but rather the marriage of biomedical advances with behavioral interventions as the next step forward in the fight against HIV/AIDS. Certainly, biomedical advances alone are not enough, […]
Brazilian cardinal Claudio Hummes once said, “We know that social exclusion is closely tied to the new economic world order, globalized, with free and open markets, which isn’t bringing prosperity or social justice to all.” The degenerative effects of this social exclusion even extend to public health. How else […]