CAPS Community Advisory Board (CAB)

Amanda Elder

Amanda B. Elder has been on the UCSF CAPS CAB since 2004. She is a clinical psychology grad student at The Wright Institute in Berkeley. Prior to school, she spent six years managing two HIV Testing programs with Asian and Pacific Islander Wellness Center and Glide Health Services in San Francisco. Amanda also provided capacity building assistance for rapid HIV testing. She provided HIV testing to recruit participants for the UCSF Reach Study. To relax after long, hard days of studying, Amanda enjoys motorcycle rides with her hot girlfriend and throwing clay.

aelder@wrighinst.edu

Beth Freedman

Beth Freedman has been advocating and working for the health of women, young people and LGBT people since 1993. She has been involved with City College of San Francisco since 1995: as a student, classified staff and now as a full-time Instructor. She currently teaches Women's Health Issues and HIV Community Leadership Training. Her areas of interest include social discrimination and health and structural interventions to improve health.

Her past work includes working at CAPS on making HIV prevention research more accessible to affected communities and as a Community Educator and Trainer for The Riley Center, Shelter and Services for Battered Women and their Children. She also has worked in the areas of sexuality and women's reproductive health. Ms. Freedman has a BA in Sociology from the University of Florida and an MPH from the University of California, Berkeley.

Lee Jewell

R. Lee Jewell joined the UCSF CAPS CAB in 2006. He is a Marriage, Family Therapist Intern (MFT-I) since receiving his MA in Clinical Psychology at New College of CA. Lee has been actively involved in the HIV/AIDS community since testing positive in 1986. Prior community work includes: PWA Liaison to the MI State Legislature, Client Services Director for the SF Center for Living, HIV/AIDS educator (K-12), SFDPH AIDS Office Reggie Policy Board. Current involvement includes: UCSF Positive Partners CAB, Council Member & Co-Chair, Community and Minority Affairs Committee for the HIV Health Services Planning Council. "My desire is to see a more integrated and healthy LGBT community, specifically men who have sex with men (MSM.) HIV/AIDS has propelled us as a community to work towards healthier ways of interacting. I firmly believe we need one another, to work together, to make this happen." 

Lorenzo Hinojosa

Lorenzo Hinojosa has been with the CAPS CAB since September of 2007.  He has 27 years experience in public health fieldwork starting in 1980 as a State Disease Intervention Specialist in Orange County, then moving on to work in Los Angeles then Oakland.  He has managed a Bay Area-wide mobile clinic project and was one of the first California Disclosure Program (PCRS) coordinators assigned to the Bay Area.  Since 2001, Lorenzo has managed the Alameda County HIV Testing program, and was recently involved in a MSM-Meth research program.  Recently, he has traveled to India, Thailand, Vietnam and Laos during which he has indulged his interest in photography.

Bridget Hughes

Bridget is Director of Outreach and Prevention at WORLD (Women Organized to Respond to Life-threatening Diseases), an organization founded by and for HIV+ women and their allies to educate, inspire, and advocate for the HIV+ women locally, nationally and internationally. As Director of Outreach and Prevention, Bridget oversees programs outreaching to HIV+ women who are not accessing the care that they need and deserve, integrating prevention with positive strategies into existing WORLD programs through development of new models for prevention by positives, supervising WORLD's positive women's speakers bureau, and launching the newly funded POWERR Project addressing HIV prevention among at risk girls in the Oakland community. She is trained as an anthropologist and has experience in advocacy and program management and development in the fields of mental health, homelessness, school gardening, community greening, indigenous rights and activist and participatory research for social change.

Alix Lutnick - Co Chair

Alexandra Lutnick is the Project Coordinator for the SWEAT (Sex Worker Environmental Assessment Team) Study conducted by the University of California San Francisco in collaboration with St. James Infirmary. The SWEAT Study seeks to characterize sexual and drug-using behavior and prevalence of HIV, STIs, HBV, and HCV among female sex workers in San Francisco, and to examine the women's psychological risk factors associated with these infections.

Alix received her MA in Human Sexuality Studies from San Francisco State University in the spring of 2004.

lutnicka@obgyn.ucsf.edu

Micah Lubensky

Micah E. Lubensky (BA, University of California, Berkeley; MS, PhD, University of California, Santa Cruz) is currently the Community Organizing and Mobilizing Manager at the San Francisco AIDS Foundation. At SFAF, Micah works with Black Brothers Esteem (www.sfaf.org/bbe), a program that supports the holistic well-being and HIV-prevention needs of African-American gay and bisexual men in low-income neighborhoods of San Francisco, who are disproportionately affected by HIV/AIDS. Micah also organizes and directs this community of men in volunteer health-outreach efforts and education projects to impact positively their community, as well as the larger African American, lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgender, low-income, and/or more general communities of the San Francisco Bay Area.

Ramón Ramírez

Ramón has worked with the LGBT communities of Los Angeles as well as San Francisco for many years, coordinating and managing HIV Prevention Programs for MSM, MSM/W, Transgender individuals, monolingual Spanish speaking recent immigrants, and HIV positive individuals. He also has been an HIV testing counselor for 7 years, and has been very involved in community issues such as homophobia, transphobia, empowerment, and immigration rights. He has accomplished this by being involved with Mr. and Miss gay Safe Latino, Latin@ Pride, and other events and activities. Ramón is a Latino gay male born in Mexico City, and is continuing his education in psychology at San Francisco State University.

Tara Regan

Tara Regan is currently a first year graduate student at the Goldman School of Public Policy, University of California Berkeley 2010. Tara previously served as the Children and Family Programs Manager for Centerforce, a NGO/CBO working with prisoners, their families and persons recently released from jails and prisons in Northern and Central California. Tara worked for Centerforce for 4 ½ years. In her role as Children and Family Programs Manager Tara supervised the San Quentin State Prison (SQSP) Visitors Center a multi service hospitality center for visiting loved ones; Families Moving Forward a family reunification case management program based out of Marin County Jail; Back to Family a family reunification case management program based out of SQSP; the LIFE mentoring program which serves youth whom have an incarcerated parent; and Live Love Learn a peer health education HIV prevention program working with SQSP women visitors. Tara received her B.S. in Criminal Justice and minor in International Politics at Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts.

Bill Stewart

Bill has worked in HIV Services in various capacities over the last 10 years. He currently provides prevention services at BOSS (Building Opportunities for Self-Sufficiency), a community-based organization that provides housing, mental health and substance abuse services to chronically homeless individuals and families residing in Alameda County, California.  He has worked with several East Bay ASOs and CBOs in various capacities, providing both direct services as well as program management. Bill is a treatment advocate and enjoys providing direct-to-patient education aimed at facilitating adherence, care retention and improved quality of life among HIV positive individuals. He also provides capacity building and grant writing assistance to various organizations throughout the United States, and is an active member of the Alameda County HIV Collaborative Community Planning Council.