Affiliations:
Tisch Community Health Prize- Guided a struggling organization to financial and programmatic stability, creating a strategic plan for the future.
- Expanded services to become the city’s only 7-day-a-week syringe exchange drop-in center.
- Facilitated an innovative partnership to create a co-located health and wellness center.
- Launched the first onsite community pharmacy partnership.
About:
Robert Cordero, Executive Director of CitiWide Harm Reduction in the South Bronx, has devoted much of his career to lessening the impact of the AIDS crisis.
CitiWide’s mission is to improve the health and social status of active drug users who are homeless or at risk of homelessness. It serves 2900 people annually in an area with among the highest rates of poverty, injection-drug use, HIV and Hepatitis C in NYC. CitiWide helps to keep everyone safer by curbing the transmission of HIV/AIDS and other diseases through needle exchange, testing and other health and social services.
Nominator Monica Sweeney, Assistant Commissioner at the NYC Department of Health noted Robert’s “extraordinary commitment to improving the health, safety and quality of life of a community that is impoverished, marginalized and stigmatized. Instead of succumbing to the despair of a resource-poor neighborhood with a poverty rate that exceeds 46%, Robert has harnessed strength, talent and funding to effectively respond by creating an innovative and groundbreaking model of prevention and care.”
Since taking the helm at CitiWide, Robert has:
Robert has worked effectively for many years to reduce the suffering of people with HIV/AIDS and those at risk for contracting the virus. He has done this with great energy, creativity, passion and commitment, serving as a model for others who hope to solve some of our most vexing public health challenges.
- Website: Robert Cordero
- Prize Awarded: 2013
