District of Columbia
Beloved public health, LGBTQ rights advocate Cornelius Baker dies
Longtime D.C. resident served as director of Whitman-Walker
Antonio Cornelius Baker, whose extensive career in public health included service as special adviser to the Office of AIDS Research at the National Institutes of Health and as executive director of D.C.’s Whitman-Walker Health and the National Association of People With AIDS, died unexpectedly at his home of natural causes on Nov. 9, according to friends and former colleagues. He was 63.
Among the numerous organizations to which he provided support and guidance was the Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation, which, upon learning of his passing, released a statement that reflects the view of many who knew Baker.
“A. Cornelius Baker stood with our founder, Elizabeth Taylor, at the beginning of the HIV/AIDS movement and throughout her legacy,” the statement says. “The ETAF officers and staff team join his family, friends and community as we mourn his loss together,” it says, adding, “We find comfort in knowing that his spirit, along with Elizabeth’s, will continue to guide and inspire us and the entire HIV/AIDS movement in our ongoing work.”
A native of New York, Baker received a bachelor’s degree from the Rochester, N.Y., Institute of Technology’s Eisenhower College before moving to D.C., in 1982 for an internship at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. He next worked for the Washington City Paper before working in 1983 as a fundraiser for the LGBTQ group Brother Help Thyself.
Biographical information from the D.C. Rainbow History Project shows he worked on U.S. civil rights advocate Jesse Jackson’s presidential campaign in 1984 and later that year joined the election campaign of former D.C. Council member Carol Schwartz. Following Schwartz’s election, Baker worked on Schwartz’s Council staff as an executive assistant from 1986 to 1989.
Baker’s LinkedIn page shows he worked briefly in 1989 at the White House Office of Presidential Personnel under President George H.W. Bush before beginning work as a Confidential Assistant to the Assistant Secretary of Health at the Department of Health and Human Services from October 1989 to May 1992.
His next career move was to join the National Association of People With AIDS in 1992 initially as policy director and later as executive director, where he served until 1999. According to his LinkedIn page, he next joined the then Whitman-Walker Clinic, which is currently called Whitman-Walker Health, in 1999 as executive director.
“Cornelius Baker led Whitman-Walker through challenging times, strengthening the infrastructure and organizational culture, but always with keen attention to the people we were serving,” said Whitman-Walker’s current CEO, Naseema Shafi. “He brought that commitment to community, to Whitman-Walker, and he continued it throughout all of his years of service.”
He held his executive director’s position at Whitman-Walker until December 2004 when he began work with the National Black Gay Men’s Advocacy Coalition as a senior adviser, a position he held until 2014, when he took a position as Technical Adviser for RHI 360, a global research organization specializing in health-related issues. He remained in that position until 2014, his LinkedIn page shows
Later that year he began work as an Acting Deputy Coordinator at the U.S. Department of State’s Office of Global AIDS Coordinator and Health Diplomacy. He assumed the position of Chief Policy Adviser for that office in 2015 and held the position until October 2017.
According to his LinkedIn page, he next served as a lecturer with the Hubert Department of Global Health at Emory University for seven years while also working as a special adviser beginning in 2018 to the Office of AIDS Research and the U.S. Presidential Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) at the National Institutes of Health. His LinkedIn page says he continued in those two positions to the “present,” possibly up until 2024.
An Emory University spokesperson confirmed that Baker was on the university’s faculty where he lectured and mentored students. Friends of Baker said his domestic partner of 20 years, LGBTQ rights attorney Gregory Nevins, lives in Atlanta and Baker stayed with Nevins when he lectured there while remaining a D.C. resident.
“The loss of Cornelius Baker, who passed away recently, has left a deep, irreplaceable void in the hearts of those who knew him, worked with him, and were touched by his profound impact on the world,” said Wisdom Ijay, in a write-up for a publication of an organization called Evening Prayer who identified himself as a friend of Baker.
“While Cornelius is most well-known for his contributions to the HIV/AIDS movement, his advocacy work spanned a range of social justice issues,” Ijay said. “His passion for racial justice, LGBTQ+ rights, and women’s rights made him an instrumental figure in advancing the causes that he cared deeply about,” Ijay states in is write up on Baker.
“When it came to LGBTQ+ rights, Cornelius was an advocate for intersectional activism – recognizing that the right for LGBTQ+ equality was not separate from the broader movements for racial and gender justice,” he states. “He worked alongside other leaders to advocate for LGBTQ+ healthcare rights, fighting for better healthcare policies and social services for LGBTQ+ individuals, particularly in the context of HIV/AIDS care.”
In a statement, Whitman-Walker Health said, “We have lost an incredible hero and absolute giant. Cornelius Baker led Whitman-Walker Health during a time when we needed him most. His tireless care for the people — the community — will be missed. Thank you for all that you have done, fearless leader. Rest well now.”
The Center for Black Equity, a D.C.-based LGBTQ advocacy organization, released a statement calling Baker “a trailblazing advocate whose dedication to health equity, especially for Black and LGBTQ+ communities, changed countless lives.” The statement adds, “Cornelius was a compassionate leader and mentor, an unwavering voice for justice, and a cherished friend to many. His passion, resilience, and commitment to equity in health and rights shaped policy, empowered communities, and uplifted those who needed it most.”
Schwartz, for whom Baker worked on her former D.C. Council staff, stated on her Facebook page that she considered Baker her dearest friend who she often thought of as her second son “for the extraordinary life he led and all the time, effort and love he gave to make the world a better place for all of us.” Schwartz added, “No one had a more brilliant mind or more giving heart.”
Baker was last seen by friends and former colleagues on Nov. 3, about a week before his passing, attending a D.C. reunion reception the Rainbow History Project held for the community leaders and activists, including Baker, it has designated as LGBTQ community pioneers.
The D.C. Office of the Chief Medical Examiner has listed the cause of death as hypertensive atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease. Schwartz said a memorial service for Baker will be held at the Washington National Cathedral at 10 a.m. on Dec. 13.
District of Columbia
How new barriers to health care coverage are hitting D.C.
Federally qualified health centers bracing for influx of newly uninsured patients
Washington, D.C. has the second-lowest rate of people who lack health insurance in the country, but many residents are facing new barriers to health care due to provisions of the sweeping federal law passed in July, which threatens access for thousands.
Changes to insurance eligibility and the rising cost of premiums, which kicked in for some in October and others more recently, are expected to leave many more patients uninsured or unable to afford medical care. Federally qualified health centers, including D.C.’s Whitman-Walker Health, where 10 to 12 percent of patients are uninsured, are bracing for an influx of newly uninsured patients while facing their own financial challenges.
Even in D.C., where uninsured rates have been among the lowest in the country, changes brought on by the passage of the Republican mega bill (known as the “Big Beautiful Bill”) will have major effects.
The changes from the bill affect Medicaid, which is free to low-income patients, and subsidies for insurance that people buy on the health insurance exchanges that were started under the Affordable Care Act, which were allowed to expire on Dec. 31.
Erin Loubier, vice president for access and strategic initiatives at Whitman-Walker Health, says some Whitman-Walker Health patients have received notices about premium increases, including several who say the increases are up to 1,000 percent more than they were paying.
“That is like paying rent,” she says. “We live in an expensive city, so any increases are going to be really, really hard on people.”
Whitman-Walker Health and other healthcare providers are expecting the changes to have multiple effects — some patients may not be able to afford coverage or may avoid going to the doctor and allow health conditions to worsen because they can’t afford care, and many more will be seeking care who don’t have insurance.
“I’m worried that we’re going to not just have people who can’t get care, but that they delay care until they’re really sick, and then the care is not as effective because they might have waited too long, and then we may have a less healthy population,” Loubier says.
Loubier says delaying care, and serving more people without insurance has major implications for Whitman-Walker Health and other health centers serving the community.
“There’s going to be a lot of pressure on us to try to find and raise more money, and that’s going to be harder, because I think all organizations who provide health care are going to be facing this,” she says.
The U.S. health care system is the most expensive in the world, and has much higher out-of-pocket costs for individuals. But in other countries like the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, and many others, health care is much less expensive — or even free.
Even though the U.S. has a high-priced healthcare system, critics say there are still ways to bring down costs by forcing insurance and pharmaceutical companies to absorb more of the costs, rather than transferring the costs to patients.
“In the U.S., they end up trying to cut costs at the person’s level, not at the level of the different corporations or structures that are making a lot of money in healthcare,” said Loubier. “Our system is so complicated and there is probably waste in it, but I don’t think that that cost and waste is at the ‘people’ level. I think it’s higher up at the system level, but that is much, much harder to get people to try to make cuts at that end.”
Ultimately at Whitman-Walker Health, healthcare providers and insurance navigators are planning to help with everyday necessities when it comes to healthcare coverage and striving to provide healthcare in partnership with patients, said Loubier.
“The key here is we’re going to have a lot of people who may lose insurance, and they’re going to rely on places like Whitman-Walker Health and other community health centers, so we have to figure out how we keep providing that care,” she said.
(This article was written by a student in the journalism program at Bard High School Early College DC. This work is part of a partnership between the Washington Blade Foundation and Youthcast Media Group, funded through the FY26 Community Development Grant from the Office of D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser.)
District of Columbia
Mayor Bowser signs bill requiring insurers to cover PrEP
‘This is a win in the fight against HIV/AIDS’
D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser on March 20 signed a bill approved by the D.C. Council that requires health insurance companies to cover the costs of HIV prevention or PrEP drugs for D.C. residents at risk for HIV infection.
Like all legislation approved by the Council and signed by the mayor, the bill, called the PrEP D.C. Amendment Act, was sent to Capitol Hill for a required 30-day congressional review period before it takes effect as D.C. law.
Gay D.C. Council member Zachary Parker (D-Ward 5) last year introduced the bill.
Insurance coverage for PrEP drugs has been provided through coverage standards included in the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare. But AIDS advocacy organizations have called on states and D.C. to pass their own legislation requiring insurance coverage of PrEP as a safeguard in case federal policies are weakened or removed by the Trump administration, which has already reduced federal funding for HIV/AIDS-related programs.
Like legislation passed by other states, the PrEP D.C. Amendment Act requires insurers to cover all PrEP drugs approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
Studies have shown that PrEP drugs, which can be taken as pills or by injection just twice a year, are highly effective in preventing HIV infection.
“I think this is a win for our community,” Parker said after the D.C. Council voted unanimously to approve the bill on its first vote on the measure in February. “And this is a win in the fight against HIV/AIDS.”
District of Columbia
Blade editor to be inducted into D.C. Society of Professional Journalists Hall of Fame
Kevin Naff marks 24 years with publication this year
Longtime Washington Blade Editor Kevin Naff will be inducted into D.C.’s Society of Professional Journalists Hall of Fame in June, the group announced this week.
Hall of Fame honorees are chosen by the Society of Professional Journalists’ Washington, D.C., Pro Chapter. Naff and two other inductees — Seth Borenstein, a Washington-based national science writer for the AP and Cheryl W. Thompson, an award-winning correspondent for National Public Radio — will be celebrated at the chapter’s Dateline Awards dinner on Tuesday, June 9, at the National Press Club. The dinner’s emcee will be Kojo Nnamdi, host of WAMU radio’s weekly “Politics Hour.”
“I am tremendously honored by this recognition,” Naff said. “I have spent a lifetime in the D.C. area learning from so many talented journalists and am humbled to be considered in their company. Thank you to SPJ and to all the LGBTQ pioneers who came before me who made this possible.”
Naff joined the Blade in 2002 after years in print and digital journalism. He worked as a financial reporter for Reuters in New York before moving to Baltimore in 1996 to launch the Baltimore Sun’s website. He spent four years at the Sun before leaving for an internet startup and later joining the mobile data group at Verizon Wireless working on the first generation of mobile apps.
He then moved to the Blade and has served as the publication’s longest-tenured editor. In 2023, Naff published his first book, “How We Won the War for LGBTQ Equality — And How Our Enemies Could Take It All Away.”
Previous Hall of Fame inductees include luminaries in journalism like Wolf Blitzer, Benjamin Bradlee, Bob Woodward, Andrea Mitchell, and Edgar Allen Poe. The Blade’s senior news reporter Lou Chibbaro Jr. was inducted in 2015.
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