Control and Prevention.
34 Gay City News Impact Awards 2020
HONOREE
JOMIL LUNA
PHARMACY SPECIALIST, AIDS HEALTHCARE FOUNDATION
Jomil Luna, who earned his master’s degree in Public Health from
Rutgers University, is a pharmacy specialist at the AIDS Healthcare
Foundation and also serves as secretary of the New York City HIV
Planning Council, which is responsible for making decisions about
the allocation of prevention funds from the federal Centers for Disease
As an out HIV-positive Puerto Rican gay man, Jomil is a passionate public health and LGBTQ advocate, mobilizing the
community around pressing issues such as HIV testing, PrEP, PEP, linkage to healthcare, and treatment.
At the AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF), Jomil is responsible for the delivery of outpatient medical services and client
education for HIV-positive New Yorkers, for addressing barriers to engagement in outpatient care, for creating outreach
plans targeting specifi c areas or populations within the New York region, and for providing input into the development of
national linkage-to-care policies.
Prior to joining AHF in 2016, Jomil was the site director of the Hispanic AIDS Forum’s (HAF) Latino Pride Center at Queens
Pride House. There, he developed new programs and services, built strategic partnerships to advance HAF’s mission,
programs, and services, assisted the group’s executive director in formulating sexual health-related public policy positions,
and served as a member of HAF’s speakers bureau.
At BOOM!Health in the Bronx, beginning in 2013, Jomil served as assistant director of prevention programs, where he
integrated the prevention efforts of Bronx AIDS Services and CitiWide Harm Reduction in their merger into BOOM!Health,
oversaw strategies for HIV/ AIDS primary and secondary prevention interventions, and identifi ed potential funding sources.
Jomil was born and raised in Camden, New Jersey, by his mother and grandmother. The fi rst in his family to graduate from
college, he earned his master’s degree in 2013.
Several years ago, Jomil was profi led in the “Other Boys NYC” series of iseegaypeople.tv. He talked about growing up
in a poor neighborhood where young men were exposed early to alcohol and drugs in their midst and faced peer pressure
to conform to prevailing norms of masculinity. He would often head into nearby Philadelphia to check out the gay scene,
and on one ocassion ran into a family friend he was sure would “rat me out.” Several weeks later, traveling in a car with
his grandmother, she asked him directly if he was gay. Jomil now realizes, he said, that her concern was due to the fact that
“she was scared for me,” given what she had heard about violence facing the LGBTQ community.
His grandmother, who he said “took it upon herself” to tell the rest of his family, told him, “At least you’re not the type to
dress up.” It would be years later, as the age of social media bloomed, he said, that his family began to see how when with
his friends, “I tend to have fun. I become loca.” One solution to catching fl ak on that score, he said with a laugh, was to
have two Facebook pages.