PrEP4All Announces Changes in Leadership as it Leads the Groundbreaking Fight for a National PrEP Program
Founded in 2018, PrEP4All has helped to transform the US response to HIV, COVID-19 and monkeypox. Under the leadership of co-founders and managing directors James Krellenstein and Christian Urrutia and managing director Kenyon Farrow, the organization has dedicated itself to using evidence, activism and a deep commitment to patient-led movements to change government responses to and investments in pandemics. This commitment remains at the core of PrEP4All’s work and programmatic direction. In 2023, we will continue to lead the fight for a national PrEP program, move forward from the recent movement-building PrEP in Black America Summit, and provide rigorous advocacy analysis and strategy to the agenda for US government accountability in pandemic preparedness and response.
As we move forward, we are also changing and evolving in our structure, governance and board composition. Jeremiah Johnson, a longtime and impassioned advocate for equitable PrEP access and leader of PrEP4All’s advocacy for a national PrEP program, will step into the role of Acting Executive Director and lead the organization through this evolution. His multilayered experience– receiving his own HIV diagnosis in 2008, providing direct HIV services at a rural HIV/AIDS organization, graduating with his Masters in Public Health from Columbia University in 2013, and advancing to become Treatment Action Group’s HIV Project Director in 2018– make him a versatile and valuable advocate to helm the organization. Peter Staley, long-term AIDS and gay rights activist, well-known member of ACT UP New York, and founding director of Treatment Action Group, will join Jeremiah in leading this transition as Board Chair.
After nearly five years with PrEP4All, and leading groundbreaking work this year to combat government inaction in addressing monkeypox, co-founder James Krellenstein has decided to move on. James helped draft our initial 2018 action plan for achieving universal PrEP access and was the spark for Staley v. Gilead which goes to trial in March. He helped uncover the CDC’s patents on PrEP, convincing the Trump administration to sue Gilead as well (U.S. v. Gilead) and led our extensive activism around access to COVID vaccines. James will be dearly missed.
Kenyon Farrow, whose work in helping lead the PrEP in Black America Summit and advocacy on behalf of those facing unlawful cost-sharing medical bills for PrEP services from private insurers helped inform Senate lawmakers to call AHIP to answer for its members, will be returning to his roots this December in addressing queer youth homelessness by joining Point Source Youth to become their VP of Policy.
“I am really grateful to the team at PrEP4All for all the great work we’ve done the last few years together,” said Farrow. “Jeremiah has shown great national leadership for over a decade on PrEP access and I’ve enjoyed our work together first at Treatment Action Group and more recently at PrEP4All. I have great faith in his leadership skills and commitment to leading PrEP4All in its next phase.”
“In 2018, PrEP4All’s co-founders created the organization with a clear vision for a national PrEP program, forever changing the dialog on what equitable HIV prevention access should look like,” said Johnson. “Over the past year, I and my fellow PrEP4All teammates have led the charge in a national movement for a PrEP program. With victory in sight, now is the time to accelerate that advocacy, and we will not stop fighting until we have a program in place that truly centers equity from conception, to funding, to implementation.”