Michelle D. Collins-Ogle, MD, FAAP, FPIDS, is a fierce advocate for youth and adolescents with or at risk of HIV, especially transgender youth and adolescents, and a leader in providing compassionate gender-affirming care to these patients. She serves as a voice for this often voiceless and unseen community, even in the rural North Carolina Bible Belt.
Dr. Collins-Ogle is medical director of the Montefiore Adolescent and Youth Sexual Health Clinic, an attending pediatrician in infectious diseases and adolescent medicine at the Children’s Hospital at Montefiore, and an associate professor of pediatrics at Albert Einstein College of Medicine. The Montefiore Adolescent and Youth Sexual Health Clinic provides comprehensive medical care for youth, adolescents and young adults with HIV/AIDS.
Before joining Montefiore, Dr. Collins-Ogle was director of infectious diseases for the Warren-Vance Community Health Center in North Carolina. She built a clinic that became a welcoming home for transgender people, a largely marginalized population facing stigma, poverty, homophobia and racism in the rural South. Her compassion drew transgender people to her clinic.
In Washington, D.C., Dr. Collins-Ogle advocates for funding for clinics that create medical homes for marginalized populations with HIV as co-chair of the Ryan White Medical Providers Coalition’s Steering Committee. When her patients were losing access to their antiretroviral therapy due to a rigid state interpretation of eligibility requirements for the AIDS Drug Assistance Program, she urged federal funders at the Health Resources and Services Administration’s HIV/AIDS Bureau to clarify the requirements. After much persistence, the HIV/AIDS Bureau produced new guidance, and patients were able to access antiretroviral therapy.
Dr. Collins-Ogle is the vice chair of the Board of Directors of the American Academy of HIV Medicine. She served as the pediatric liaison for the Pediatric Infectious Diseases Society and the HIV Medicine Association and as a member of the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS during the Obama Administration. Dr. Collins-Ogle received the Linda Bell Award for Advocacy in HIV/AIDS from the North Carolina Community AIDS Fund.
For her leadership in advocating for and providing optimal care for trans youth and adolescents with or at risk of HIV, IDSA is delighted to recognize Dr. Collins-Ogle with a 2024 Society Citation Award.