Julieta (Julia) Giner Oral History Interview, 2024

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Summary

Creator:
Giner, Julieta
Abstract:
Julieta (Julia) Giner, a nurse, was born in Bonn, Germany, to a German mother and a Spanish father. Her family immigrated to the United States when she was an infant. Being from an immigrant family, Giner understood that life can be challenging, and this understanding motivated her to work against the unfair stigma against HIV/AIDS patients. When one of her good friends became gravely ill because of AIDS in 1989, Giner knew she wanted to be involved in the development of treatment for HIV/AIDS. Giner started working at Duke Hospital in 1993, initially as a floor nurse in the general medicine. At the time, some of the patients in her ward had opportunistic infections due to AIDS, but wanting to be more closely involved in HIV/AIDS work, she spoke to Dr. John A. Bartlett, the physician running the public care clinic for HIV/AIDS patients. In 1996, Bartlett invited her to apply to become a clinical research nurse in that adult infectious disease clinic, where she worked until 2009. From 2005 to 2009, she worked with Bartlett in Moshi, Tanzania, at the Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Centre. When she returned to Durham, North Carolina, she worked in a general pediatric infectious disease clinic, where she was still able to see HIV/AIDS patients until she retired in 2020. This collection contains 1 oral history interview conducted on February 5, 2024 by Anthony Zhao as part of the Bass Connections Agents of Change Oral History Project. In the interview, Giner discusses her early friendships within the LGBTQ community; taking care of a good friend with AIDS; her work taking care of HIV/AIDS patients at Duke Hospital; her extensive involvement with the community advisory board; her successes and failures with health education about HIV in Durham, North Carolina; and the unique bond within the clinic staff. The themes of this interview include LGBTQ issues, societal stigmatization, community activism, health education, and advocacy.
Extent:
1 interview (1 transcript) and 0.98 GB
Collection ID:
OH.GINERJ

Background

Scope and content:

Includes 1 oral history interview with Julieta (Julia) Giner conducted on February 5, 2024 by Anthony Zhao as part of the Bass Connections Agents of Change Oral History Project.

In the February 5, 2024 interview, Giner discusses her early friendships within the LGBTQ community; taking care of a good friend with AIDS; her work taking care of HIV/AIDS patients at Duke Hospital; her extensive involvement with the community advisory board; her successes and failures with health education about HIV in Durham, North Carolina; and the unique bond within the clinic staff. The themes of this interview include LGBTQ issues, societal stigmatization, community activism, health education, and advocacy.

Biographical / historical:

Julieta (Julia) Giner, a nurse, was born in Bonn, Germany, to a German mother and a Spanish father. Her family immigrated to the United States when she was an infant. They first moved to Connecticut, later moving to Sudbury, Massachusetts. Her father, an electrochemist working on fuel cell technology, held a doctoral degree in electrochemistry, eventually, founded his own company, Giner, Inc, in 1973. Her mother was a full-time homemaker who raised 5 children. Unsure of what to do after high school, Giner went to Spain and Germany where she worked for a year. She came back to the United States and went to college but did not graduate. She worked until she was 30 when she went to nursing school at the MassBay Community College in Wellesley, Massachusetts.

When one of her good friends became gravely ill because of AIDS in 1989, Giner knew she wanted to be involved in the development of treatment for HIV/AIDS, because she found it "inhumane, that [her friend] people living with HIV/AIDS, who needed people to be around them, was, all of a sudden, without all of those people." From an immigrant family in the 1960s, Giner always understood that life can be challenging, and this understanding motivated her to work against the unfair stigma against HIV/AIDS patients.

Giner started working at Duke Hospital in 1993, initially as a floor nurse in the general medicine--designated Hendrick ward. At the time, some of the patients in her ward had opportunistic infections due to AIDS. Giner wanted to be more closely involved in HIV/AIDS work, and she spoke to Dr. John A. Bartlett, the physician running the public care clinic for HIV/AIDS patients. In 1996, Bartlett invited her to apply to become a clinical research nurse in that adult infectious disease clinic, where she worked until 2009. From 2005 to 2009, she worked with Bartlett in Moshi, Tanzania, at the Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Centre. When she returned to Durham, North Carolina, she worked in a general pediatric infectious disease clinic, where she was still able to see HIV/AIDS patients until she retired in 2020.

Later, as a clinical research coordinator for Bartlett, she regularly interacted with and monitored patients who participated in the clinical trials of HIV drugs at Duke. Giner worked closely with the Duke AIDS Research and Treatment Center Community Advisory Board (CAB), a group made up of the local population who was affected by HIV/AIDS that gave input to providers on the studies to be conducted. Duke's CAB maintained a uniquely significant amount of influence on AIDS-related clinical trials, empowering people in the community. "Sometimes, we had people [on the CAB] who had never been in any kind of position [of power] like this before," she said. In the early 2000s, Giner turned her attention to Africa, where there was still limited access to those newly available treatments, and patients still died from AIDS like they did two decades earlier at Duke.

Giner's father was worried at first to learn that she was taking care of AIDS patients, but after he learned more about how the virus is transmitted, he began to support his daughter's work, even as it was very taxing. "We might have been the only person who was...[holding the patients] when they were crying," she said. In the public care clinic at Duke, she knew that with other stressors, such as financial instability in their lives, HIV often takes a backseat in patients' minds. According to Giner, because "HIV is unique," and "the stigma is so encompassing," continued advocacy for the patients is still necessary today, even with powerful disease management techniques, through education, care, and research.

Acquisition information:
Accession A2024.063 (transferred by Rebecca Williams, May 2024)
Processing information:

Processed by Lucy Waldrop: September 2024

Arrangement:
Organized into the following series: Interview, February 5, 2024.
Rules or conventions:
DACS

Contents

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Terms of access:

Copyright for Official University records is held by Duke University; all other copyright is retained by the authors of items in these papers, or their descendants, as stipulated by United States copyright law.

Preferred citation:

[Identification of item], Julieta (Julia) Giner Oral History Interview, Duke University Medical Center Archives.