2006 POINT SCHOLARS

Harlan (Ben) Harvey

Harvard University

School of Law

As the middle child of three boys growing up in rural Virginia, Ben understood the looming threat of exclusion. Raised in a community where homophobia was the norm rather than the exception, Ben from an early age felt the sting of jokes that were not consciously intended for him, yet he knew they were about him. Ben says, “My options were clear from the start, be straight or be gone. As a result, I remained closeted — suffocated.” Despite this challenge, Ben committed himself to achieving the highest levels academically and socially. After graduating summa cum laude from Virginia Commonwealth University, where he served as Student Government President, Ben went on to attend medical school at the University of North Carolina. Ben’s career focus is health policy aimed at ending socioeconomic-based disparities in accessing medical care. To this end, as co-president of the Rainbow Alliance of Medical Students, Ben drafted a report and proposal detailing LGBT health issues and requesting the inclusion of those issues in the medical curriculum. In addition to these efforts, Ben has been active with other important causes, including but not limited to teaching in a summer program to help underrepresented groups matriculate medical school, helping to secure care and housing for AIDS patients, serving at a free clinic, and educating middle school student on HIV/AIDS. Working with students, faculty and physicians across the nation, Ben hopes to ensure that LGBT persons are recognized as an important patient population that deserves knowledgeable and personalized care. Ben will begin law school at Harvard University in the fall to complete dual training in medicine and law. After earning MD and JD degrees, he would like to focus his efforts in the arena of health policy reform as he works to ensure that access to quality health care is a right of all people, not a privilege for a few.

In Ben's own words: “As the barriers preventing access to healthcare become even more impenetrable, the people left without look less like stereotypical images of poverty, and more like a cross-section of middle-America. Through policy driven efforts rooted in social justice, I hope to help create a national health care model that is more accessible to the populace no matter race, orientation, or income.”