This year, the recipient of The Casey Award is Glen Brown, for his many years of tireless and passionate devotion to HIV/AIDS advocacy.
The award will be presented at the Casey House & Casey House Foundation annual meeting, June 13, 2017.
Glen Brown was a tireless and passionate HIV/AIDS advocate for almost 30 years. He joined AIDS Action Now!, a pioneering activist collective, shortly after its founding in 1987. He quickly became co-chair of the organization and, among many other accomplishments, was instrumental in getting the Province of Ontario to establish the Trillium Drug Program, the province’s first program to cover catastrophic drug costs. In 1989, along with Quebec and US-based groups, he and his fellow activists successfully demanded the meaningful inclusion of people living with HIV in the 1989 International AIDS Conference, and all the conferences that followed. These are just a few of his many contributions and accomplishments.
As director of programs and services and general manager at the Community AIDS Treatment Information Exchange (CATIE), he developed the organization into the foremost source of HIV/AIDS information in Canada for people living with HIV. His work affected the lives of tens of thousands of Ontarians, and he remained active throughout his life on issues that affected communities living with and affected by HIV/AIDS. He was an incredibly strategic thinker and generous mentor whose work informed that of the many activists and advocates who followed. He will be remembered as someone who fought tirelessly against oppression in many guises and will be deeply missed, but never forgotten.