It has been 35 years since the first case of HIV/AIDS was recorded in Connecticut, and since then, Yale has been at the forefront of scientific interventions to address the challenges posed by the epidemic.
Elaine O’Keefe, who currently serves as the executive director for Yale’s Center for Interdisciplinary Research on AIDS, was one of the first public health practitioners to work on the epidemic. She vividly recalls the grave circumstances brought upon certain New Haven residents by the advent of HIV/AIDS in the 1980s.
“New Haven was the epicenter of HIV in Connecticut at the time,” she said. “HIV was heavily impacting the gay community and devastating injection drug users.”
Then working as a staffer in the New Haven health department, O’Keefe implemented the first legal needle exchange program in the United States with the help of her colleagues – and critical assistance from Yale researchers.
“There were people at Yale even then who were very committed not only to helping us with our organizing effort, but also to evaluating the syringe exchange program and showing that it was effective,” O’Keefe said, speaking in an office decorated with photos of the original needle-exchange van that she and her colleagues had set up three decades ago. “Their work remains today as one of the most substantial contributions made in the field of HIV prevention and treatment.”