Central to the overall mission of the New York City (NYC) Department of Health is to address health inequities caused by racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, and poverty and achieve racial equity and social justice.

Achieving racial equity and social justice is also central to the DoH’s Bureau of Hepatitis, HIV, and STI (BHHS) mission to promote the health of all New Yorkers with or vulnerable to HIV, end HIV transmission, reduce HIV-related inequities, and combat stigma.

To respond to these inequities, the BHHS and Public Health Solutions launched a new initiative, entitled Building Equity: Intervening Together for Health (BE InTo Health), that focuses on improving HIV outcomes for priority populations, including Black and Hispanic/Latino Older Adults Living with HIV.

The focus of the BE InTo Health initiative is to implement and evaluate the feasibility of integrating a HIV-tailored geriatric toolkit (The Golden Compass) into diverse clinical settings throughout NYC.

Building on the 4Ms Age-Friendly Healthcare framework and Proactivity Model of Successful Aging, the BE InTo Health (BN2H) program at the STAR-Downstate health center endeavors to identify emerging functional impairments and to proactively manage or mitigate the progression of these deficits with standard of care treatments and prevention interventions before disability or adverse events manifest.