After H.I.V. Diagnosis, a Life Devoted to Outreach

For National H.I.V. Testing Day last month, Michelle Lopez took to the streets. She walked around Fulton Mall in Downtown Brooklyn and tried to convince passers-by to take a rapid H.I.V. test. If they needed moral support, she walked them over to the Brooklyn clinic where she is director of H.I.V. programming.

Ms. Lopez, 46, is no stranger to what she calls “guerilla tactics” when it comes to H.I.V. tests. When she lived in the New York City shelter system in the early 1990s, she spent a lot of time doing volunteer outreach at beauty parlors and laundromats.

“Excuse me,” she recalled saying to strangers getting their nails done or folding baby clothes. “Has anyone here ever had a conversation with someone living with H.I.V.?”

Ms. Lopez disclosed her H.I.V. status, then passed out pamphlets for Community Healthcare Network, the clinic where she and her daughter Raven tested positive in 1991.

“I just got tired of being victimized,” Ms. Lopez said. “And I was not going to let other people get this disease.”

Ms. Lopez brought so many people into the clinic for testing and care that in 1993 she was offered a job at Community Healthcare Network as a treatment educator. She worked doing outreach, education and counseling there for 18 years.

Over that time, H.I.V. care and medication transformed. Like many people diagnosed with H.I.V. in the early 1990s, Ms. Lopez realized that she and her daughter didn’t have a death sentence.

“Michelle always impressed everyone at the office with knowing who she was and what she wanted, and asking for it,” said Dr. Susan Ball, associate professor of medicine at New York Hospital Cornell Medical Center, who has been treating Ms. Lopez since 2005.

Ms. Lopez’s daughter, who is now 23, went through a similar transformation. In elementary school, Raven Lopez was stigmatized and bullied. She said a teacher wore rubber gloves around her and refused to take her on school trips.

“Imagine a little kid going through that,” Ms. Lopez said.

On a recent afternoon, Raven Lopez was taking part in a two-day training to get certified as an H.I.V. tester. She said her mother, who is now the director of H.I.V. programming at the Brooklyn Multi-Specialty Group private practice, inspired her to enter the health care field.