1. Ellie
Ellie, a bisexual woman of color, founded the Inclusive Care Project after seeing how little training exists for the specific needs of LGBTQ+ and BIPOC patients. The organization expands access to training for health professionals and works to close health disparities for queer communities and people of color, offering online and corporate courses. Her aim is a safer healthcare system for everyone.
2. Billy Caceres
Billy A. Caceres, PhD, RN, AGPCNP-BC, FAHA, FAAN, is an assistant professor at Columbia University School of Nursing and the Center for Sexual and Gender Minority Health Research. He is the principal investigator on studies of how adverse life experiences affect sleep and heart health in vulnerable adults, including the RESTORE Study on discrimination, sleep, and blood pressure in Black and Latin American LGBTQ+ communities.
3. Colonel Margarethe Cammermeyer (Ret.)
Cammermeyer, RN, PhD, joined the Army in 1963 at 19 after her family emigrated from Norway. She volunteered for Vietnam, where she ran the neurosurgical intensive care unit. Forced out when she became pregnant, she later worked in Veterans Affairs hospitals in Washington and lost her place in the Reserves in 1988 after disclosing she was a lesbian during a security clearance interview. She challenged the ruling, won reinstatement in federal court, and saw her story told in the film "Serving in Silence."
4. Bobbi Campbell
Born in 1952, Campbell was a registered nurse and a graduate student at UCSF when he was diagnosed with Kaposi's sarcoma at 29 in 1981, early in the AIDS epidemic. Writing in The Sentinel, he became one of the first people to publicly put a face to the disease, the self-described "AIDS Poster Boy." He and Baruch Golden wrote some of the first safer-sex guidelines for gay men, and he pushed people with AIDS to advocate for themselves until his death on August 15, 1984, about three years after his diagnosis.
5. Kevin Edelen
Kevin Edelen, MS, APRN, FNP-C, is a family nurse practitioner with FOLX Health, which provides gender-affirming care, and an adjunct faculty member at Georgetown University. His work centers on primary care, substance misuse, and LGBTQIA+ patients. His team delivers virtual primary, preventive, and sexual health care across 24 states, covering fertility, hormone replacement therapy and gender consultations, nutrition, smoking cessation, and STI testing.
6. Clare Madrigal
Clare Madrigal, BSN, RN, is a nurse educator focused on building LGBTQ+ inclusion across healthcare. Through ReachEducation.gay (Rainbow Education and Consulting for Health), she works to raise the visibility of LGBTQ+ patients and the gaps in cultural understanding that lead to discrimination and weaker care.
7. Florence Nightingale
During the Crimean War, Nightingale founded modern nursing education and used statistics to argue for reform, including a groundbreaking statistical diagram. Her legacy is also contested: critics point to the elitism and racism in her views, including their effect on Indigenous children in Canada and New Zealand. Though she never married and was deeply religious, historians have speculated she may have been a lesbian, citing her own writings about sharing a bed with other women.
8. Anthony Pho
Anthony Pho, PhD, MPH, ANP-C, is an adult nurse practitioner and a board member of the Gay and Lesbian Medical Association. He began as an ER nurse at Johns Hopkins Hospital, holds an adjunct position at NYU Rory Meyers College of Nursing, and practices at Callen-Lorde Community Health Center. At Weill Cornell Medicine he built and taught an LGBTQ+ curriculum for medical residents, and he serves on the executive committee of the LGBT Health Workforce Conference.
9. Em Rabelais
Em Rabelais, PhD, MBE, MS, MA, RN, is an assistant professor of human development nursing science at the University of Illinois at Chicago and describes themselves as a white, disabled, queer, agender health ethicist. Rabelais argues that real reform cannot come from within existing structures and calls for those who hold power in nursing to cede it. Rabelais has published 10 papers and earned several honors.
10. Lillian Wald
Wald founded public health nursing in the U.S., coined the term "public health nurse," started the Henry Street Settlement, and was an early champion of school nurses. She never married and, in her own correspondence, described deep affection for at least two close companions. She fought for women's rights and racial integration and helped establish the NAACP. After her death on September 1, 1940, some 2,000 people gathered at Carnegie Hall to honor her.
11. Rachel Walker
Rachel Walker, PhD, RN, FAAN, describes themselves as a queer nurse inventor working at the intersection of community and biotech, and is an associate professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. The first nurse named an Invention Ambassador by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Walker brings a background in oncology nursing, rural emergency response, patient navigation, and disaster relief. In 2020 Walker received the Global Hero Award from the Gay and Lesbian Medical Association Nursing Section.
12. Bertha Wright
Born in San Francisco in 1840, Wright was a public health nurse and one of the first school nurses in Alameda County. Seeing a desperate need for infant care, she co-founded the Baby Hospital, later renamed UCSF Benioff Children's Hospital Oakland. A determined health activist and instructor of postgraduate nursing students at UC Berkeley, she died on May 6, 1971, and is buried beside her partner, Mabel Weed, in Palo Alto, California.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who was Bobbi Campbell? A San Francisco public health nurse diagnosed with Kaposi's sarcoma in 1981, Campbell became the self-described "AIDS Poster Boy," one of the first Americans to come out publicly with AIDS, and helped organize the early People With AIDS movement before his death in 1984.
What did Lillian Wald contribute to nursing? Wald founded public health nursing in the United States, coined the term "public health nurse," started the Henry Street Settlement, and pushed for school nurses, women's rights, and racial integration. She was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame.
Who is Colonel Margarethe Cammermeyer? An Army nurse and Vietnam veteran who was discharged after disclosing she is a lesbian, then won reinstatement in federal court. Her story was told in the film "Serving in Silence."
Why are LGBTQ+ nurses important to patient care? Caring well for LGBTQ+ patients takes cultural competence built on evidence. Nurses who share or study these communities help shape policy, research, and education that reduce health disparities and discrimination.
Are the nurses on this list only from the past? No. The list spans historical figures like Wald and Nightingale and current clinicians and researchers such as Billy Caceres, Kevin Edelen, and Rachel Walker who work in LGBTQ+ health today.