During nursing school at New York City’s Columbia University, Jennifer Belfry’s first clinical experience was at a primary care and HIV clinic in the South Bronx. “Healthcare in the South Bronx is not for the faint of heart, and it was an eye-opening experience seeing the holes the U.S. healthcare system lets people fall into,” says Jennifer, who learned to bring her clinical A-game, out-of-the-box problem-solving skills, and partnership mindset to work early on. After graduating, she was hired to work in the clinic and began teaching the next class of nursing students. And the rest, as they say, is history: She’s been providing and training providers in offering innovative primary and HIV care ever since.
Now a Clinical and Longitudinal HIV Care Program Lead at Q Care Plus, an Avita Care Solutions company, Jennifer is a driving force behind the community-focused care management solution’s mission of leveraging technology to compassionately remove patient healthcare barriers through stigma-free telehealth services, including world-class HIV prevention (PrEP) and sexual wellness care. She’s fueled by a fierce belief that compassionate healthcare is a human right and one that is wrongfully denied to scores of patients seeking HIV prevention and treatment services every day. “As a nurse, I try to empower patients to make healthy choices for themselves and their loved ones,” Jennifer says.
Read on to learn how Jennifer seamlessly balances nursing leadership, clinical expertise, and administrative prowess in her fight to achieve health equity for thousands of underserved patients living with HIV or disproportionately burdened with the risk of becoming HIV positive.
Jennifer is fueled by a fierce belief that compassionate healthcare is a human right and one that is wrongfully denied to scores of patients seeking HIV prevention and treatment services every day.
Working locally but thinking globally
In her multipronged role at Q Care Plus, “Jennifer epitomizes the qualities of a true healthcare leader: Her collaborative and diligent leadership of nursing mentorship and patient clinical programs have directly impacted the ability of marginalized communities to receive comprehensive and compassionate HIV prevention services and treatment,” says Dr. Christopher Hall, chief medical officer of Avita Care Solutions.
Central to her work at the organization is developing a training program to increase the number of providers with HIV expertise. “The pool of providers able to offer HIV care in America is shrinking while, due to newer antiretroviral therapy (ART) medications, the number of people living with HIV continues to grow,” Jennifer says. To close the gap and better prepare her team’s providers to offer HIV care, Jennifer developed a training program for them to become HIV Certified Specialists (AAHIVS) through the American Academy of HIV Medicine (AAHIVM). Her program includes a six-month, one-to-one mentoring relationship with an existing AAHIVS provider, monthly lectures, and weekly office-hour meetings. In 2023, 15 of the providers on Jennifer’s team completed the AAHIVS certification process, and 11 now provide expert HIV care to patients six months after completing their certifications. The mentoring program has been so popular that providers continue to meet weekly to learn from each other even after they complete the training program.
Jennifer also has played a key role in jumpstarting Q Care Plus’ groundbreaking longitudinal HIV care program (Q Care Link), a fully remote HIV care program powered by telehealth and clinicians with HIV expertise. Her contributions to the program’s success include developing protocols, evaluating program outcomes, undertaking quality improvement, and facilitating provider training. The program’s creation allows Q Care Plus, previously focused on HIV prevention services, to provide status-neutral patient care. Any individual who completes an HIV test through the organization will be linked to care, no matter what the test result (those testing negative for HIV are offered prevention services, and those testing positive are provided with expert and culturally competent HIV treatment). This helps remove one of the biggest roadblocks for people living with HIV: stigma.
A commitment to research and sharing best practices in HIV care with other clinicians is central to Jennifer’s success. Rest assured, Jennifer believes in professional development for herself as strongly as she does for her mentees. In 2023, she received her Doctorate in Nursing Practice (DNP) from the University of Massachusetts Boston Honors College with a dissertation focused on improving HIV screening rates in adolescents and young adults in a primary care setting. She is now a registered nurse practitioner in 17 states. In addition to her nursing mentorship programs, her research at Q Care Plus has focused on quality improvement and implementation science. “Jennifer is a visionary whose work can be felt on both a micro and macro level,” Dr. Hall says. “Her proven track record of working locally but thinking globally has exponentially deepened the effect of her initiatives, which will be built upon for years to come.”
Jennifer is a visionary whose work can be felt on both a micro and macro level. Her proven track record of working locally but thinking globally has exponentially deepened the effect of her initiatives, which will be built upon for years to come.
"All the pieces to solve HIV are here now; we just need to use them correctly.”
Whether you’re talking about mentoring the next generation of nurses, crafting research on longitudinal HIV care, or providing direct patient care, compassion, creativity, and innovation are at the heart of the fight to end HIV, Jennifer says.
“I have cared for patients from all walks of life, but it’s the patients with the most scars and barriers to care who stick with me,” she explains. One patient who remains lodged in her memory is someone she cared for the day he was released from Rikers Island prison after more than 10 years of incarceration. “He had never seen a cell phone before and got lost trying to navigate the New York City transit system,” Jennifer says. “He was not in a great mood when I greeted him, took his medical history, and conducted his physical exam. But by the end of the visit, he was ok with my corny jokes, and the mood lightened. I sent in his HIV medications, his blood pressure pills, even the Viagra he asked for.”
When Jennifer saw him three months later for a follow-up visit, the patient was a “changed man,” she says. “He was dressed to the nines, had a new haircut and clean shave, and was carrying a beautifully carved wood cane. He said he came in to see me and tell me I had made him feel like a human being for the first time in decades; he had a new lease on life and wouldn’t squander it. And yes, his lab results were great—his HIV viral load was undetectable. I never saw him again, but I think about him still.”
Truth be told, Jennifer says she’s known as a stickler for not giving up. “The reason I’m still in HIV care today is because I’m quite stubborn, and it’s about time we ended HIV in the U.S.,” she says. With the prevention and treatment options available and social media as a method of communicating information, we should have zero new HIV diagnoses in America, Jennifer believes. “Anything greater than zero is a failure of our healthcare system,” she says. “All the pieces to solve this are here now; we just need to use them correctly.”
The reason I’m still in HIV care today is because I’m quite stubborn, and it’s about time we ended HIV in the U.S. All the pieces to solve this are here now; we just need to use them correctly.
TEAM MEMBER SNAPSHOT
Name: Jennifer Belfry, DNP, MSN, APRN, FNP-BC, AAHIVS
Title: Clinical and Longitudinal HIV Care Program Lead
Location: Q Care Plus (An Avita Care Solutions company)
Advice for patients seeking a sexual healthcare provider:
“Be your own advocate and ask questions. Ask for a sexual health assessment. Ask about your prevention options. Some providers may initially shy away from asking these questions because they are afraid of offending patients. If the provider doesn’t know how to answer you, ask for a referral!”
Favorites:
- Wellness app: “Stashcook–I cook a lot, and this is a great recipe collector.”
- Book: “I’ve been trying my hand at gardening, so my reading list this summer has Vegetable Gardening for Dummies on it!”
- Music: “Anything pop-punk from the 90s.”
- Destination: “The beach! Any beach. Preferably one with a playground attached to it.”
