HIV, Loss, and the Power of Trust: Perry N. Halkitis, PhD, MS, MPH

Perry N. Halkitis, PhD, MS, MPH, was 18 years old in 1981, living the ordinary social life of a young gay man in New York, when he began watching the people around him fall ill. He would not test positive for HIV himself until 1988. Today—63 years old and serving as dean of the Rutgers School of Public Health—he carries a visible reminder of that era: a tattoo of stars on his right arm for friends he has lost to the disease.

The losses were personal and repeated. Halkitis has buried a partner and six close friends to HIV, and he expected, like many in his generation, that his own life would be cut short as well. Instead, he has spent decades turning that grief into motivation. “Every day is a gift for me,” he says, describing HIV as something that has been “difficult, but also a blessing,” giving him an early understanding of life, an appreciation for what people endure, and the courage to keep speaking out.

That courage now shapes his approach to public health messaging, which he argues depends less on data and more on who is delivering it. He points to West Virginia’s success getting residents vaccinated during COVID-19, a result he credits to using local pharmacists and trusted community figures as the face of the campaign rather than outside health officials. The same logic, he says, applies to HIV prevention: reaching young Black gay men require messengers who share their identity and lived experience, not a 63-year-old White academic dean.

Halkitis calls this diffusion theory the idea that behavior change spreads most effectively through trusted community influencers, whether in a bar, a church, a restaurant, or at a Knicks game. He has also applied the principle personally. At a family engagement party during the COVID-19 pandemic, he found himself an hour deep in conversation with a guest who to that point had refused to get the vaccine. Rather than citing statistics, Halkitis appealed to the man as a father, asking whether he wanted to be present for his son’s future. The man got vaccinated the following week.

For Halkitis, the exchange illustrates a broader point about public health communication: facts alone rarely move people, but human connection—appeals to identity, family, and shared community—often does. It is a lesson forged not in a classroom but in decades of loss, survival, and the determination to keep using his voice.