When Deborah Levine was in graduate faculty at New York College, she was identified with dyslexia and inspired by a counselor to enter an trade like hair and make-up versus public well being, believing the rigor could be too intense for her. However her ardour was serving to folks, notably within the psychological well being house. So with the help of her dad and mom, Levine continued on that path and started working with emotionally disturbed and acting-out latency-age kids who have been impacted by the early days of HIV, which started her work coping with the sickness.
She now serves because the Group Engagement Director for the CUNY Graduate Faculty of Public Well being and Well being Coverage (SPH), the place she’s been since 2020. Inside that position, she is the director for the Harlem Well being Initiative, addressing the distinctive priorities and well being disparities going through the group with a concentrate on HIV and entry to care.
A Queens native, Levine, 62, labored with Harlem Congregations for Group Enchancment for 11 years because the Vice President of Well being and Wellness. Alongside together with her love of the group, she says working in Harlem allowed her to change into the very best well being advocate and group engagement officer she might be, studying from watching figures like Dr. Hazel Dukes, Frederick Boyd Williams, and Bishop Preston Washington.
“Listening to how they strategically thought of tips on how to create protected areas and financial improvement and entry to well being care locally, I used to be very lucky to have the ability to sit at their ft,” Levine mentioned. “These have been individuals who have been creating playbooks after we didn’t have playbooks.”
Educated as a medical psychiatric social employee, Levine has labored within the public well being house for over 30 years, primarily in Harlem, working with group members, religion leaders, and well being officers. She holds levels from Fairleigh Dickinson College, Columbia College, NYU, and Hunter School.
She continued her work in HIV and AIDS via management roles at nonprofit organizations just like the Nationwide Black Management Fee on AIDS and the Alison Gertz Basis for AIDS Schooling. She was additionally a founding member of the Nationwide Black Ladies’s HIV AIDS Community.
Whereas working with the Gertz Basis in 2017, Levine skilled two mergers inside 5 years, leading to her being laid off. After working in consulting for a short time, she was provided the place at CUNY, and she or he was blissful to search out herself again in Harlem as soon as once more.
CUNY SPH was established as an unbiased faculty in 2016, with the Harlem Initiative being created in 2019. Levine says the group outreach work has advanced based mostly on the wants of Harlem, from navigating COVID, educating and mobilizing round vaccines, making a Hashish Fairness Board, and likewise ensuring the scholars are community-centered of their areas of focus.
Levine says she is each “nervous and cautious” with regard to what legislative cuts will do in the long run to providers like NYC Well being and Hospitals and their affect as a community hospital or Federally Certified Well being Facilities like Ryan Well being in Manhattan.
“When you concentrate on public well being and what public well being means, it’s actually taking a look at all of the social and racial inequities, every little thing from environmental points to maternal youngster well being, to meals insecurities, to immigration, to housing, to the info assortment, to entry to care. That’s what public well being is,” Levine mentioned. She says, cuts to companies just like the Nationwide Institute of Well being, and the Facilities for Illness Management all affect public well being.
Levine says transferring ahead in addressing Harlem’s well being inequities, in addition to assembly the distinctive challenges of this administration, would require group leaders from all sectors, together with native medical leaders, elected officers, attorneys, to interpret the legal guidelines and be capable of develop the very best technique, and group stakeholders similar to block associations and group boards. “It’s all of us,” Levine mentioned. “Once we suppose that the desk is full, go searching and say, who’s not right here being represented?”
Final week, Donald Trump introduced the federal government wouldn’t acknowledge World AIDS Day. Healthcare leaders throughout the nation pushed again and commemorated the day of remembrance anyway.
“We’re not going wherever. This administration can attempt to cancel World AIDS Day, however they’ll’t cancel our kind of love, our group, or dedication,” Levine mentioned. She affirmed CUNY SPH would proceed to amplify the event, which honors those that have been misplaced to the sickness and people who proceed to combat for options. “They’ll cancel it in D.C., in the event that they wish to, however that’s not going to cease me and others from simply shouting somewhat louder.”
“(World AIDS Day) belongs to the folks,” Levine continued, “and now we have a duty to maintain lifting our storytellers up and telling our story and demanding the assets and the respect that our communities require and want.”
