Sergey’s Bull Horn and The Boyz Talk with Howard A. Grossman, MD AlphaBetterCare

The QueerCentric

Howard Grossman is a board-certified internist, who had a private practice in Manhattan from 1988 to 2005, which he reestablished in 2009. In 2013 he opened the only primary care private practice dedicated to LGBT health and HIV care in the state of New Jersey. He is a general internist, but is most widely known as a specialist in HIV medicine and LGBT Health. Dr. Grossman is a Senior Attending in the Department of Medicine at St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital and is an Assistant Clinical Professor of Medicine at Columbia University, College of Physicians and Surgeons. He is Clinical Assistant Professor of Medicine at NYU-Langone Medical Center and an Attending Physician at Overlook Hospital in Summit, NJ, part of the Atlantic Health System.

Dr. Grossman left private medical practice in 2004 to serve as the Executive Director of the American Academy of HIV Medicine, a professional association of 2100 front-line HIV providers, based in Washington, DC and held this position until 2006. In 2007 he served as the Medical Director of the Conant Medical Foundation in San Francisco, an organization dedicated to education and care as a way to fight the HIV epidemic. In that role he had both clinical and administrative functions. From 2008-2009 Dr. Grossman was part of the amazing team at Fenway Community Health in Boston, where he served as a staff clinician and as Associate Director for Industry-Sponsored Trials.

In the interim between leaving AAHIVM and joining the Conant Medical Foundation Dr. Grossman worked as an international clinical mentor. He educated doctors and nurses in Russia and Belarus working with the American International Healthcare Alliance and he spent seven weeks in the Far West of Nepal helping to establish the first HIV treatment facility in this area with a high rate of HIV infection among migrant workers. This was a collaborative program between the International Center for Equal Healthcare Access (ICEHA) and Family Health International.

Dr. Grossman earned a B.A. in political science at Haverford College and studied medicine at SUNY Downstate College of Medicine in Brooklyn. He did his residency at Kings County Hospital, one of the largest public hospitals in Brooklyn. It was there that he saw some of the first cases of AIDS in the early 1980’s.

Dr. Grossman worked at St. Clare’s Hospital, at the first dedicated AIDS unit in the country and entered private practice in 1987. He has one of the largest HIV practices in New York and serves a diverse patient population. He has become nationally recognized as an educator on HIV issues and as an advocate for gay and lesbian civil rights and the rights of People with HIV.

His work with people affected by HIV led him to become one of the plaintiffs in the landmark suit Vacco v. Quill, et al., which sought to overturn laws preventing terminally-ill patients from obtaining their physicians’ help to end their own lives. The case was decided in 1997, with the Supreme Court finding no constitutional guarantee of the “right to die,” but leaving the door open for states to experiment with various options.

Dr. Grossman has written articles for many publications and for The Body.com. He has reviewed articles for The AIDS Reader and served as medical editor for columns in HX, POZ, GMHC’s Treatment Issues, AMFAR’s treatment newsletter among others.

Dr. Grossman has served in the past as a consultant to many pharmaceutical companies, including Pfizer, Tibotec, Merck, GlaxoSmithKline, Abbott, Hoffman-LaRoche, Ortho Biotech, Janssen, Agouron, Gilead, Chiron, Monogram Biosciences, and Bristol-Myers Squibb. He has also worked with government panels at the National Institutes of Health and the Food and Drug Administration and served as a reviewer for CDC grant applications. Dr. Grossman was the medical advisor for the patient-oriented website www.aidsmeds.com. He has been involved with multiple community-based organizations. Most recently Dr. Grossman has served as Chair of Physicians for Compassionate Care, an organization of over 600 physicians in New York State who support the medical use of marijuana. Prior to taking the reins at AAHIVM he served as the Board chair for the New York State Chapter, and worked as the chairman of the Public Policy Committee and Chairman of the Ethics Committee. He has also served on the Board of Directors of several other organizations. He most recently served on the board of Bailey House, which provides housing and case management services for homeless people living with HIV and their families. In the past he has been on the boards of Visual AIDS, working with artists with HIV and using art to educate about HIV; the New York Chapter of Compassion in Dying, a national group dedicated to helping patients with end-of-life issues, especially around pain control; the Organization of HIV Healthcare Providers, a PAC organized to work on various issues of interest to people with HIV and their practitioners; and the honorary board of Love Heals/The Allison Gertz Foundation. Dr. Grossman also served on the boards of the Gay Men’s Health Crisis and the People with AIDS Health Group in the past. He organized and ran the medical tent for the GMHC Morning Party on Fire Island for 9 years, providing one of the first organized medical operations to serve a large party of this kind and helping to promote harm reduction and HIV prevention in this setting. He has been involved with a number of activist groups including ACT-Up, TAG, the Coalition for Salvage Therapy (CST) and the AIDS Treatment Activists’ Coalition (ATAC).

You can find more info about Howard A. Grossman, MD practice at www.alphabettercare.com.

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