Community-based
health promotion
of the HIV/AIDS crisis
During the height of the AIDS crisis, community-based HIV/AIDS service organizations created cutting-edge prevention materials that affirmed and celebrated queer identities. Often crafted by young community members with little formal training, these health promotion campaigns framed safer sex as a collective strategy for resisting oppression and sustaining queer liberation past the onset of the virus.
In collaboration with the Binghamton Human Sexualities Research Lab, I study the history of Gay Men’s Health Crisis (GMHC), the world’s first HIV/AIDS service organization and a leader in these critical and empowering prevention campaigns. This project has involved (a) the collection of 120+ oral history interviews with former members of GMHC’s staff and volunteer workforce, and (b) curation of additional GMHC archival materials, particularly from those who served as young paraprofessionals within the organization. These interviews and records have been donated to the New York Public Library’s Division of Manuscripts, Archives, and Rare Books (“Sean Massey Gay Men’s Health Crisis Collection” & “GMHC Stories: An Oral History Project”) and will be made available to the public in early 2026.
I am authoring “Sexy Innovations,” a book chapter on GMHC’s critical model of HIV prevention, created by young members of New York’s LGBTQ community. I have presented findings and detailed the team’s methods at a number of panels, exhibits, and national conferences. My lead-author papers on this topic have been published or are forthcoming in The Oral History Review (2025) and the American Journal of Public Health (available online ahead-of-print).
Read more about this project in
The Conversation and Binghamton University News.
Participatory
Health Promotion With
Contemporary Young People
As the Assistant Director of the Program for Youth Development and Engagement (PRYDE) in the Bronfenbrenner Center for Translational Research at Cornell University, I partner with community-based organizations to create and evaluate programs related to community health and empowerment. I also coordinate and co-lead trainings in youth participatory action research (YPAR) for diverse audiences — empowering these young people to ask questions about their health and the social world, then encouraging them to craft strategies for keeping their communities safe. Read more about PRYDE’s approach to youth participatory action research here.
Born from my study of historic HIV prevention materials, I am interested in empowering contemporary communities of young queer people to craft critical health promotion strategies. In particular, I aim interested in exploring how insights from historic HIV prevention campaigns — which posited prevention as a form of collective action — can be adapted in practice with young LGBTQ people today.
Relatedly, this includes inquiry into how LGBTQ adolescents navigate complicated policies and cultural messages to access important forms of sexual and reproductive healthcare, such as PrEP and Doxy PEP (see my editorial in the American Journal of Public Health).
Teaching and Mentorship
I am responsible for mentoring and supervising a cohort of 20 undergraduate PRYDE Scholars — highly motivated students in the College of Human Ecology at Cornell University, each participating in various community-engaged and youth-focused research projects. I also co-instruct the BCTR Scholars Program through the Bronfenbrenner Center for Translational Research, a similar opportunity for undergraduate students to forge meaningful research-practice partnerships with community organizations, largely around issues of health equity and justice.