Meet our 2025 
Single Payer Champions!

Steve Auerbach, MD, MPH, FAAP, Zachary Gallin, MD, Helena Zeleke, Gabrielle Wimer, MD, Cameron Clarke, Jennifer Sugijanto, MD, Assembly Member Jessica González-Rojas, Nia Nottage, Brandon Cuicchi & Mark Hannay — learn more about our honorees below!

Click here to get your tickets today to join us on Monday, June 23!
Click here to purchase an ad congratulating our honorees in our digital program!

We are thrilled to announce the first honoree of our 2025 Benefit Celebrating Single Payer Champions; Steve Auerbach, MD, MPH, FAAP!

Dr. Steve Auerbach was destined to be part of the health justice movement from birth, when his late physician father was moonlighting for none other than Dr. Quentin Young. Hence, Steve jokingly refers to himself as a “teal diaper baby”. Growing up his father told him that “We should have Medicare starting at age zero”.

Steve’s activism began at age 12, canvassing for McGovern for president. He was introduced to the intersection of social justice, politics and healthcare when he spent two consecutive college summer terms abroad studying comparative healthcare systems in the People’s Republic of China, Sweden, and the United Kingdom.

Committed to addressing health disparities, Steve completed dual MD and MPH degrees at Columbia University. During medical school, the New York Times published his letter arguing that “there are large gaps in the medical-care safety net. In practice, there is no right to healthcare in the US. What we offer is an out-of-control 3-tier system of private, public, and none.” And that the real issue was “whether access to those services will be ensured by society for all its members” noting that of the industrialized countries around the world, the U.S. was one of just two that didn’t, the other being apartheid-era South Africa. He recalls, with a mix of shock and pride, that he actually received letters with death threats from physicians claiming that he was a traitor to the medical profession. Alas, the letter still holds true.

After completing a pediatrics residency at UCLA, Steve started at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as an Epidemic Intelligence Officer in Atlanta, and then as the national epidemiologist in Micronesia. He returned to New York City with the Health Resources and Services Administration working on quality improvement at community health centers and identifying communities with unmet healthcare needs. He was deployed at the WTC site on 9/11 and as a team leader in Louisiana after Katrina. After reaching the Public Health Service 30-year mandatory retirement in 2019, he worked with the Elizabeth Warren campaign, then as a volunteer with the NYC Department of Health during the early years of COVID. 

Steve has shown up for the fight against inequality with Occupy Wall Street, the Fight for 15, Black Lives Matter, OneFairWage, NoMore24, Invest in Our New York, Make the Road, and Jews for Racial and Economic Justice. He has been a leader in outreach for PNHP NY Metro, presenting at medical centers and organizing many of our monthly educational forums. He serves on the boards of PNHP NY Metro, NYS Chapter 3 Academy of Pediatrics, the New York State-wide AAP Advocacy and Policy Committee, and One Payer States.

He feels his greatest achievement has been “just continuing to be here through the years, showing up for any social, political and economic justice movement” wherever he can be useful. With the times being what they are, he is more active than ever, and he asks us all to redouble our fight for single payer, social and economic justice more broadly, and the immediate fight against both neoliberal and reactionary corporate autocracy. 

We are truly honored in recognizing Dr. Steve Auerbach’s lifelong commitment to the single payer and global social justice movements as we bestow upon him the 2025 PNHP NY Metro Health Justice Award.

This year we are also honoring 5 exceptional medical students who have demonstrated exemplary work in the health justice movement:

They are Zachary Gallin, MD, and Helena Zeleke from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai; Gabrielle Wimer, MD, and Cameron Clarke from the Vagelos School of Medicine at Columbia University; and Jennifer Sugijanto, MD, from the Weill Cornell Medical School.

Medical students are critical in determining the future of healthcare and our healthcare system. Their work and values define how health injustices are addressed. These students have been deeply involved in coordinating the work of New York City Against Segregated Healthcare (NYCASH), an organization focused on systemic injustices in healthcare. In 2014 Mount Sinai students called for desegregation of their clinics and formed a working group to explore segregation of care by payer status. They carried out research projects, organized community meetings, and held town halls in East Harlem to clarify the need to desegregate care. Mount Sinai students then connected with students at other NYC medical schools to share information across institutions. Their initiatives included a yearly lobby day (pictured below) and data collection to study the extent of payer-segregation. 

Since its forming, they have expanded the organization’s goals beyond segregated care, promoting a broad range of policies and initiatives that involve equity and opportunity that is so critical in supporting our communities.

The students’ work with NYCASH is strongly connected to their work for PNHP NY Metro as members of Students for a National Health Program. They presented a monthly forum for our Chapter on segregated healthcare, co-led sessions of our Universal Healthcare Legislative Advocacy Fellowship (UHLAF), and have organized medical student teach-ins which focus on various legislative issues, especially the New York Health Act.

This past February they organized their own student Lobby Day where they met with legislators in Albany to support a number of progressive bills, including the New York health Act. They have also worked in collaboration with many community organizations, including the New York Doctors Coalition, a health justice organization working more broadly on various social justice issues.

We are truly indebted to Cameron, Zachary, Jennifer, Gabrielle & Helena for their extraordinary vision, initiative, inclusivity, skillful organizing and leadership. As some recently graduated and transition into residency, we applaud the example each has set in integrating advocacy into their medical training and approach to caring for their communities.

Their efforts to promote desegregated care, and to fight against privatization and inequality demonstrate laudable values that are essential for the future of our healthcare leaders. We are honored that these future doctors are a part of PNHP NY Metro and we are overjoyed to recognize this cohort of incredible students by presenting each with our 2025 PNHP NY Metro Health Justice Award.

Our third and final 2025 Health Justice Award goes to steadfast champion of the New York Health Act, Assembly Member Jessica González-Rojas! 

New York State Assembly Member Jessica González-Rojas (Democrat/Working Families Party) represents the 34th Assembly District, which includes the diverse communities of Astoria, Corona, East Elmhurst, Jackson Heights, and Woodside in Queens County. She has dedicated her life to fighting for immigrant rights, racial justice, LGBTQ liberation, healthcare, labor power, and gender equity while forging connections between various progressive movements. Jessica is a progressive champion and brings her advocacy and organizing expertise to her work as an Assembly Member. 

Since she assumed office in 2021, Assembly Member González-Rojas has introduced and passed legislation on maternal health, transgender rights, transit access, election reform, worker protections, gun violence prevention, healthcare transparency, and more. She successfully advocated for funding in the state budget to increase outreach for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) enrollment in hard-to-reach communities. As the prime sponsor of the Universal School Meals Act, she has secured $145 million to expand the free breakfast and lunch program to 86% of students in the state.   Assembly Member González-Rojas secured $25 million to codify her legislation to establish the Reproductive Freedom and Equity Fund, which provides critical funding to abortion providers and the New York Abortion Access Fund to expand access to reproductive health care for all New Yorkers. She has also passed legislation and secured $8 million for continual health care coverage for children from birth to age 6 enrolled in Medicaid or the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP).

Assembly Member González-Rojas is the Chair of the Task Force on Women’s Issues, Chair of the Subcommittee on Human Trafficking and the Chair of the Subcommittee on Health of the Black, Puerto Rican, Hispanic, and Asian Legislative Caucus. She currently serves on the Board of Directors of the National Hispanic Caucus of State Legislators (NHCSL) as the Northeast Region Chair, and on the Board of Directors of If/When/How, a national nonprofit network of law students and lawyers committed to reproductive justice.

From the beginning of her service in the state legislature, Assembly Member González-Rojas has been a cosponsor and unflagging champion of the New York Health Act, speaking at numerous rallies, town halls, panels and press conferences for the bill. She brings the need to pass the New York Health Act into countless conversations, speaking about it spontaneously and passionately as the ultimate solution to address the systemic, foundational inequities within the current profit-centered healthcare system that perpetuate segregation, discrimination, inequitable health outcomes, and avoidable suffering and deaths. 

Our 2025 Community Activist Award goes to Nia Nottage and Brandon Cuicchi — two inspiring and dedicated ACT UP NY organizers and activists!

Nia Nottage and Brandon Cuicchi are skilled, creative and collaborative organizers with ACT UP NY fighting for healthcare and dignity of people living with HIV and AIDS. Their organizing takes many forms, from collaboration on New York Health Act educational events, rallies and actions, to leading demonstrations, to research, materials and art making, to speaking at and MCing press conferences, to organizing against mask bans, attacks on gender-affirming care, exploitation for profit, cuts to PEPFAR, USAID, Medicaid, Medicare and other vital services. We are in awe at their inclusivity, versatility and analysis of the intersections and correlations of justice movements and communities!

And last, but certainly not least, our 2025 Lifetime Achievement Award goes to Mark Hannay, the Director of Metro New York Health Care for All, for his decades of service to the movement for health justice, organizing and educating us all!

Get your tickets TODAY to celebrate these incredible champions of health justice with us this coming Monday, June 23rd at 6pm. Make a tax-deductible contribution or purchase an ad in our digital program in their honor. Read on to learn a little more about them!

Mark Hannay has been Director of Metro New York Health Care for All since 1995, a community-labor coalition in the Downstate region that advocates for universal health care and issues strategic to that goal. He began his health care advocacy and activist life back in 1991 as a volunteer member of ACT UP New York, and subsequently worked professionally as the Health Care Policy Associate at Gay Men’s Health Crisis from 1993-4, a Staff Organizer with the Same Boat Coalition from 1996-8, and a Program Associate for the Nursing Home Community Coalition of New York State from 1998-2000. From 2002-2018, Mark co-produced and co-hosted the weekly “Health Action” show on WBAI Pacifica Radio.
Over the past 30 years, he has served in a variety of leadership roles with various local, statewide, and national coalitions and campaigns, currently including the Campaign for New York Health, Community Voices for Health System Accountability, the Coverage for All campaign, Health Care for All New York, Health Care for America Now’s New York State Network, NY-11 for Health Care, the Public Policy and Education Fund of New York, Rise and Resist’s Health Care Action Group, and the Save Beth Israel and New York Eye and Ear Campaign. Previous leadership roles included with New Yorkers for Accessible Health Coverage, the New York Network for Action on Medicare and Social Security, New York Jobs with Justice, the New York State Health Care Campaign, Medicaid Matters New York, and the Universal Health Care Action Network.

Mark earned a BA in psychology from the University of Rochester in 1978, and studied psychology at the graduate level at New York University from 1979-81. He has received recognition awards from the Public Health Association of New York City, New York Jobs with Justice, Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute at Hunger College, Families USA, and the Coalition for a District Alternative. He served on the PNHP NY Metro Chapter Board from 1993-2017, and since then has been a member of its Advisory Committee.

Each of our honorees have contributed in countless ways to our collective movement for equitable, just, universal healthcare and healthcare as a human right. It's an honor and a privilege to share space with each of them in recognition of their tireless dedication to creating a world in which we all can thrive.

Get your tickets today to join us on Monday, June 23rd, 6:00pm to 8:30pm at Judson Memorial Church in NYC! The evening will feature live music, a light buffet and refreshments, recognition of our health justice champions and community activists, our silent auction + great company and conversation. In-person, virtual, sliding scale, and free sponsored tickets are all available.