Cecilia Gentili’s New York Legacy Included a Challenge to Trump-Era Health Policy

Cecilia Gentili’s work in New York connected direct health-care services, transgender advocacy and a broader campaign to change how sex workers are treated by public institutions. She died on February 6, 2024, after spending years building organizations and coalitions aimed at improving safety and access for marginalized communities.

Born and raised in Gálvez, Argentina, Gentili later lived in Brazil before moving to the United States. In New York City, she held leadership roles at two LGBTQ and HIV/AIDS care organizations: GMHC and Apicha. Her work also included co-founding a free clinic for sex workers at Callen-Lorde Community Health Center, an effort that addressed health-care needs among people often excluded from traditional services.

Gentili was also a co-founder of DecrimNY, which advocates for the decriminalization of sex work in New York. Her organizing helped secure the repeal of the state’s so-called “Walking while trans” law, a policy that had been used against transgender women suspected of sex work. That campaign placed transgender New Yorkers and sex workers at the center of a debate over policing, discrimination and civil rights.

In 2019, Gentili founded Trans Equity Consulting, continuing her work beyond nonprofit health-care settings. Her advocacy extended to federal policy as well. She later filed a lawsuit challenging the Trump administration’s removal of Affordable Care Act nondiscrimination protections covering gender identity.

The legal challenge reflected a concern with consequences that reached beyond Washington: changes to federal health policy could affect transgender people seeking care and the institutions serving them, including providers in New York City. Gentili’s career linked those national policy fights to practical, local work—helping people find care, organizing for changes in state law and creating institutions focused on communities she knew were frequently underserved.

Her biography is therefore also part of New York’s LGBTQ history. At GMHC, Apicha and Callen-Lorde, and through DecrimNY and Trans Equity Consulting, Gentili worked across health care, advocacy and policy. Her efforts addressed both immediate needs and the rules that shaped whether transgender people and sex workers could access support without facing additional stigma or punishment.

Source and reuse information This backgrounder adapts factual material from “Cecilia Gentili” on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cecilia_Gentili The adapted text is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International license (CC BY-SA 4.0): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/. This story has not been independently reviewed or fact-checked.

Further links listed by the Wikipedia page (not independently checked): - https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/dangers-trans-women-latin-america-u-s-n621151 - https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/03/us/transgender-supreme-court-healthcare.html - https://www.brooklynpaper.com/david-prize-finalist-cecilia-gentili-bk/ - https://gaycitynews.com/cecilia-gentili-trans-immigrants-sex-workers-dies/ - https://www.them.us/story/cecilia-gentili-transgender-advocate-author-obituary - https://www.them.us/story/cecilia-gentili-one-woman-show-red-ink-review Image rights Original illustrative artwork created from story keywords. It is illustrative, not a documentary photograph.