| Mark Behar |
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Brief Biographical Sketch of Mark P. Behar for LBGPA Caucus 2008
In the late 1970s, Mark P. Behar worked as an emergency medical technician and as the director of one of the nation’s first Gay Men’s STD Clinics in Milwaukee, the Gay People’s Union VD Testing Center. (It later changed it’s name several times, and is now known as the Brady East STD Clinic www.bestd.org). His medical director of the facility was family practice doctor Bob Bolan, who encouraged him to consider PA training. (Mark went to Washington, DC for PA training at the same time that Bob Bolan moved to San Francisco, where he became one of the formative HIV/AIDS doctors and founders of the Bay Area Physicians for Human Rights, the gay doctor's "older cousin" predecessor to the Gay & Lesbian Medical Association.) After attending several annual meetings of the American Public Health Association’s STD Task Force during their national convention, he met New York PA Ron Vachon, and learned that there were a large number of gay and lesbian health workers attending these meetings. He later met PA Clover Jacobson, and the three of them outlined the idea for a gay PA caucus, and in 1979, the Caucus was born. Two years later, in 1981, the Caucus received formal approval by the House of Delegates, and this was reaffirmed amidst much controversy in 1982. Mark was busy with PA school from 1979-81, and participated by phone and mail, but didn’t attend the first AAPA conference and attend the meetings of the organization he helped form until 1982, where he participated in the reaffirmation hearings! He has attended every national AAPA convention since 1982, and is now a Distinguished Fellow of the AAPA.
Although serving as the Caucus' newsletter editor and secretary for several years, he assumed the position of treasurer and membership chair for many years. The Caucus became incorporated in the State of Wisconsin, and later achieved IRS 501 (c) (3) status in the mid-1990s under his direction.
His first job after graduation was with the Club Baths Milwaukee, while he was searching for a PA position, not something very common in the early 1980s. Eventually, he became employed at Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin, where he continues to work part time today as a colposcopist. Today, he works as a family practice physician assistant in an inner city clinic, and still volunteers at one of the nation’s oldest, all volunteer gay STD facilities. His clinical areas of interest include men’s health, gay, lesbian, & transgender health, HIV/AIDS, anorectal cancer, electronic medical records, and international travel medicine. He has spoken at many national medical conferences on topics including HIV/AIDS, STDs, abnormal Pap smear management & colposcopy, and Gay, Lesbian, & Transgender Health. He answers questions about STDs and sexual health on AllExperts.com. He serves as clinical faculty for the PA Programs at Marquette University and the University of Wisconsin Madison, and the University of Wisconsin Medical School’s Department of Family Medicine Residency Program.
He has bachelor’s degrees from the University of Wisconsin- Milwaukee and George Washington University in Washington, DC, where he got his PA training in 1981. Nineteen years later in 2000, he received his master’s degree in PA Studies from the University of Nebraska Medical Center- Omaha. His hobbies include public speaking and teaching, photography & videography, computer stuff, dogs, and writing. He is on the national board of directors for the National Association of Black and White Men Together.
| Mark Behar, PA-C |
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