Awards of Courage

David Barr

Honoring with Pride 2007 Honoree
 

David Barr, a long-time HIV treatment advocate and educator, is the director of the Collaborative Fund for HIV Treatment Preparedness, a project of Tides Network and the International Treatment Preparedness Coalition.

Mr. Barr is a graduate of the City University of New York Law School. He joined the fight against HIV/AIDS in 1985 as a staff attorney at Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, working on many of the first legal challenges to HIV-related discrimination. He was a member of ACT UP/New York from 1987 to 1991 and a founding member of both the Treatment Action Group and the ACT UP/New York Treatment and Data Committee. Mr. Barr was also a member of the National Institute of Medicine’s AIDS Roundtable from 1989 to 1992. From 1990 to 1997, he was the director of treatment education and advocacy at Gay Men’s Health Crisis, the world’s first and largest AIDS service provider and educator.

At the George Washington University School of Public Health, Mr. Barr was the founding executive director of the Forum for Collaborative HIV Research from 1997 to 2001. Through the Forum, he organized the very first meetings to discuss such topics as adherence to HIV medicines, metabolic consequences of HIV treatment, developing outcomes research agendas for HIV medical management, and utilizing directly-observed therapy for HIV treatment. He served as the chief operating officer of the Drug Policy Alliance from 2001 to 2002.

Mr. Barr has a long history of developing collaborative projects to further access to HIV treatment. He was a founder of the Community Constituency Group of the AIDS Clinical Trial Group (ACTG) at the National Institutes of Health, and served on ACTG’s executive committee—the first person living with HIV/AIDS to sit on an executive body of a clinical research program. He also coordinated a coalition of more than 400 organizations known as United for AIDS Action, and he co-organized the National AIDS Treatment Advocates Forum, the first such forum for community educators, held annually since 1993. At GMHC, he also began a treatment education program.

As a consultant, Mr. Barr has worked for the Ford Foundation, Kaiser Family Foundation, the National Institute of Mental Health, the New York State Department of Health, the United Nations Development Programme, and UNAIDS. He has been a panelist for the Food and Drug Administration’s Anti-Viral Advisory Committee and the President’s Commission on AIDS. He is also a member of the Technical Evaluation Review Group for the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria.

Mr. Barr is a native New Yorker who lives in Fremont, New York, with his partner, Sam Avrett.