In the 1980s, the medical establishment didn’t always heed this call when it came to HIV/AIDS.
HIV/AIDS may be manageable now, but in the early days it was a mystery and often ignored, as it primarily affected gay men and was accompanied by stigma and shame. Many doctors and medical administrators stood by as the disease took its toll. Eric Goosby was one of the pioneers who shed light and provided much-needed treatment.
The fight against HIV/AIDS has consumed Goosby’s entire career, and millions of lives have been bettered thanks to the intensity of his commitment. Goosby received his M.D. in 1978 from UCSF, completing his residency there in 1981 — the first year AIDS was clinically observed by UCLA doctor Michael Gottlieb. By the time his fellowship at UCSF ended in 1983, San Francisco was in a full-blown crisis, and Goosby was on the front lines, a member of the revolutionary Ward 86, the first dedicated AIDS clinic in the country.
Credit: UCSF
Figuring out the nature of the crisis, while trying to treat it, absorbed the doctors of Ward 86, who developed the “San Francisco Model” of care: a patient-centered collaboration with a wide network of carers, including social workers, mental health care providers, addiction specialists and community organizers. This model has become the standard of care around the world. Goosby focused on establishing partnerships with methadone maintenance clinics to help addicts obtain HIV services, as IV users were less likely to seek treatment and the black community was overrepresented among injection drug users.
Even as Goosby and Ward 86 attacked AIDS on multiple fronts, patients were slipping away. Goosby and the other doctors fell into despair during therapeutic group sessions and struggled to maintain their personal relationships. The fight was further complicated by a lack of response from the federal government, who ignored the epidemic for many years. There wasn’t funding for research, education or treatment programs for this national health crisis. In cities that weren’t using the “San Francisco Model,” those with HIV/AIDS were suffering, especially patients from marginalized communities that were being misdiagnosed and poorly served.
Dr. Eric Goosby, U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator, gives his perspective on 30 years of HIV/AIDS in the U.S. Credit: HIV.gov
Fed up with inaction, and having lost his 500th patient, Goosby moved to Washington, D.C., in 1991 to direct HIV Services at the Health and Human Services Department, spreading the approach of the San Francisco Model throughout the country. Even as he took on this important federal role, he practiced part-time in an AIDS clinic in the city’s public hospital, D.C. General. As an administrator, he brought funding and services to 25 AIDS epicenters and to all 50 states and U.S. territories, and rose up the ladder to become director of the health department’s office of HIV/AIDS policy. He later became President Clinton’s senior advisor on HIV-related issues and helped initiate a dialogue on racial disparities in HIV/AIDS that formed the basis of the Minority AIDS Initiative.
As treatment slowly began to advance in the U.S., Goosby turned his attention to the rest of the world, where poorer nations, in particular, were finding themselves devastated by the disease. After working on scaling up treatment in Rwanda, South Africa, China and Ukraine as CEO of Pangaea Global AIDS Foundation, Goosby was nominated by President Obama to serve as the U.S. global AIDS coordinator and administer the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (Pepfar), a $48 billion program credited with cutting AIDS deaths by 10 percent in some countries.
The remarkable career of Eric Goosby has no end in sight. In addition to serving as the U.N. special envoy for tuberculosis, Goosby is a professor of medicine at UCSF. And, of course, he returned to care for patients at Ward 86, which continues to provide treatment and set standards for prevention and care around the world.
“It’s just something that is almost like breathing to me. I love practicing medicine; I love helping people in that way; I like using my mind in that way; maybe I love pushing people around; maybe I love telling people what to do. I don’t know what it is, but I cannot imagine not doctoring.”
Ava DuVernay is a force in Hollywood, having made a name for herself not only as a director, producer and screenwriter, but as a champion of change. Now, more than ever, media representations that we see daily in print, on television, and in films are being called into question. But, for the past decade, Ava DuVernay’s mission has been to push for more inclusivity on sets and on screen. “Diversity is not just a box to check. It’s a reality that should be deeply felt and held and valued by all of us,” DuVernay said in an interview with Fast Company.
How did DuVernay become a Hollywood game changer?
Her story isn’t a straight line — it’s a series of pivots based on strong determination and the willingness to take chances to forge her own path. Born in Long Beach, California, DuVernay was raised in a matriarchal environment with lots of women who always encouraged her to follow her heart. She grew up near the Compton neighborhood of Los Angeles and was the first African American student body president at her high school. Film wasn’t her dream from the get-go. As an undergrad at UCLA, she pursued a major in African American studies, then shifted into the world of public relations after spending time as a journalist.
Ava DuVernay gave the commencement speech at the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television in 2017. Photo credit: UCLA
At 27, she started her own public relations firm, The DuVernay Agency. As a film publicist, she was able to get close to different filmmakers, seeing how movies were made firsthand. This proximity to the world of film enamored her. While on a film set in East Los Angeles for the 2004 crime thriller, “Collateral,” DuVernay had an aha! moment when she realized that she wanted to be the one telling the stories, the one making the movies. “Javier Bardem was on set, and something about the scene with Javier and Jamie, this brown man and this black man: It was this gritty place in East L.A. at night, with a digital camera, and I just loved it,” she shared with Rolling Stone. “I started writing a script that weekend.“
In 2011, she self-financed “I Will Follow,” her first feature film she wrote and directed, after a few years of learning the film trade while working on shorts and documentaries. Just three years later, she directed the acclaimed “Selma,” a film about Martin Luther King Jr. and the 1965 Selma to Montgomery march. Following the release of “Selma,”DuVernay was the first African American female director to be nominated for an Academy Award for best picture. With the upcoming release of “A Wrinkle in Time,” boasting a budget exceeding $100 million, DuVernay is now the first African American woman to direct a live-action film with a budget of that size.
Ava DuVernay on her journey to become the first black woman to direct an Oscar nominated film. Credit: TIME
Beyond her notable accomplishments and series of “firsts,” she’s hoping to create a larger shift in Hollywood, one with varied voices and stories in cinema. Just three years ago, she expanded her film distribution company to become ARRAY, where female filmmakers and people of color are at the forefront. “It comes down to who gets to tell the story? If the dominant images that we have seen throughout our lifetime, our mother’s lifetime, our grandmother’s lifetime, have been dominated by one kind of person, and we take that, we internalize it, we drink it in as true, as fact. It’s tragic,” DuVernay wrote in Timemagazine. “It goes beyond the film industry. These are the images of ourselves we consume. It affects the way we see ourselves and the way other people see us.”
The world of film in the United States has been built and defined by the predominately white patriarchy. But with her courageous streak and fearless creativity, DuVernay is opening doors for women, people of color and those who have been underrepresented in the film industry for so long. By advocating for a diverse set of at least 50 percent people of color and women, DuVernay has put her own politics in action: “Inclusion is really half — half of the cast, half of the directors, half of the writers are women or girls, half of the room, more than half of the room is of color,” she shared with Ellemagazine. “I think we get really satisfied with less.” And she’s just getting started. For “A Wrinkle in Time,” DuVernay warned the each of the department heads on her crew not to submit the same list of hires unless they could prove they had considered others. In making inclusion a key nonnegotiable in her creative process, DuVernay is changing the narrative for how stories are told and who gets to tell them.
Ralph Bunche was a man of many firsts. He was the first African-American valedictorian at UCLA. The first African-American in the country to receive a Ph.D. in political science. And the first African-American to win the Nobel Peace Prize. Bunche is considered the “Father of Peacekeeping” for negotiating an end to the first Arab-Israeli war while working at the United Nations.
In 1949, Bunche stood in his hotel room on the Greek island of Rhodes with members of the Israeli delegation and the Egyptian delegation. These were two groups of people, in a room together, that hadn’t been able to reach a resolution over the control of Palestine in more than 30 years. Now, in the midst of the first Arab-Israeli war, Bunche had been sent by the United Nations to end the conflict. He knew it wouldn’t be easy, but was determined to find a resolution.
Ralph J. Bunche shaking hands with Louise Ridgle White, future Los Angeles Assemblywoman candidate. Credit: Rolland J. Curtis, Rolland J. Curtis Collection of Negatives and Photographs/Los Angeles Public Library
How did Bunche crack the code on making peace? To understand his impact, we have to rewind a bit. Born to humble beginnings in Detroit, Michigan, Bunche was raised by his grandmother after his parents passed away. Early on, it was clear he was someone to watch. In high school, he was known as an expert debater and was named his class valedictorian. In 1923, he enrolled at UCLA, supporting himself with an athletic scholarship and a janitorial job. Bunche graduated in 1927, with a degree in international relations, and was once again the class valedictorian.
His graduation speech revealed glimpses of the career he would have as a peacemaker: “The future peace and harmony of the world are contingent upon the ability, yours and mine, to affect a remedy.”
Ralph J. Bunche, UCLA portrait. June 1927. Credit: UCLA Library Special Collections, Charles E. Young Research Library
There was no stopping him. He went on to Harvard for graduate studies in political science, and from there he taught at both Howard and Harvard. While at Howard, he became one of the leaders of a group of Black intellectuals known as the “Young Turks.” The Young Turks’ perspective on race set them apart. They argued that issues of “class, not race” were key to solving the so-called “Negro problem.” This line of thinking was later adopted by the civil rights activists of the 1960s, including Martin Luther King, Jr.
In a shift away from the world of academia, he joined the U.S. State Department as an advisor on the future of colonial territories in 1944. Two years later, Bunche was at the U.N. From June of 1947 to August of 1949, he worked on the assignment that would serve as a defining moment in his history and the world’s: the confrontation between Arabs and Jews in Palestine.
Acting U.N. mediator, Ralph J. Bunche, in Palestine, 1948. Credit: UC Library: A Centenary Celebration of Ralph J. Bunche
In 1949, peacekeeping was a very new concept and Bunche was determined to show that it wasn’t just a fad adopted by the U.N. – he wanted to prove it had long-lasting power. While he stood in his bedroom in Rhodes, with members of both the Israeli delegation and the Egyptian delegation, he revealed two sets of memorial plates bearing the name of each negotiator. He told the negotiators that once they signed the armistice agreement, they’d each get one of the plates as a souvenir. But if they didn’t reach an agreement, he’d break the plates over their heads. He was met with laughter from both sides, but ultimately his plan worked – they signed the agreement.
Ralph Bunche speaks on world peace at the meeting of American Association for the United Nations in Los Angeles, 1951. Credit: CriticalPast
His achievement in reaching the 1949 armistice agreement was the reason he received the Nobel Peace Prize a year later. Though they were original, the plates weren’t his secret ingredient for peacekeeping. Bunche believed there was no human problem that couldn’t be eventually be solved. He had great empathy and was interested in improving the lives of ordinary people. According to Sir Brian Urquhart, former Undersecretary General at the U.N. and one of Bunche’s colleagues, Bunche was an incredibly good listener. All these traits, along with his own unique creativity and humor, truly made him the Father of Peacekeeping, and his pioneering methods are still used by the U.N. today.
Ralph J. Bunche and Charles E. Young in front of Bunche Hall, UCLA 1969. Credit: UC Library: A Centenary Celebration of Ralph J. Bunche
