Adrian Shanker, govt director of the Spahr Middle in California, has been appointed senior adviser on LGBTQI+ well being fairness within the workplace of the assistant secretary for well being on the U.S. Division of Well being and Human Providers.
Shanker has been serving in a voluntary capability within the Biden-Harris administration as a member of the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS since 2021. He joined the Spahr Middle, which supplies well being care and different companies to LGBTQ+ residents and folks residing with HIV in Marin County, in April. He beforehand had based the Bradbury-Sullivan LGBT Group Middle in Allentown, Pa., and led it for greater than seven years.
Throughout his time on the Spahr Middle, Shanker led an organizational rebranding with a brand new emblem and web site, an enlargement of packages for LGBTQ+ households, and the launch of the group’s Coaching Institute. He has been a vital advocate for MPX vaccine entry in Marin County, and he’s editor of the 2020 anthology Our bodies and Limitations: Queer Activists on Well being and the brand new anthology Disaster and Care: Queer Activist Responses to a International Pandemic.
“It has been an incredible pleasure to work with the crew on the Spahr Middle to reinforce and increase packages and companies for LGBTQI+ and HIV+ neighborhood members in Marin,” Shanker mentioned in a press launch from the middle. “After I began on the Spahr Middle, I didn’t anticipate a brief tenure; nevertheless, I’m assured that the group is in a robust place to proceed its constructive momentum in service to Marin’s LGBTQI+ and HIV+ communities. I’m deeply humbled by the invitation to affix the Biden-Harris administration on this position and I stay up for supporting the administration’s efforts to advance well being fairness for the LGBTQI+ neighborhood.”
“Once we employed Adrian, we knew we had been bringing somebody in with great experience in LGBTQI+ well being,” Denny David, chair of the Spahr Middle’s board of administrators, mentioned within the launch. “It seems that the Biden administration agrees. For many years, the LGBTQI+ neighborhood has fought for a seat on the desk, and we’ve got seen the devastating penalties of being ignored. Whereas we’re unhappy to lose Adrian, that disappointment is tempered by an incredible quantity of neighborhood pleasure. We’re glad to have a champion for the well being of our neighborhood heading to Washington to advise the administration, and on the Spahr Middle, we are going to proceed to seamlessly supply the companies and packages our neighborhood wants.”
Cindy L. Myers has been named interim govt director on the Spahr Middle. The group will do a nationwide seek for a brand new govt director, led by Kevin Chase Government Search.
