John Chittick
| John Chittick | |
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| Born | February 27, 1948 Fitchburg, Massachusetts |
| Died | April 5, 2017 (aged 69) Ifalik, Micronesia |
| Occupation | Youth HIV/AIDS Expert and Activist |
| Website | teenaids.org |
John Chittick (February 27, 1948 – April 5, 2017) was a youth HIV/AIDS expert known for his series of Global AIDS Walks to fight the spread of HIV by educating youth. He worked in over 85 countries providing outreach to young people at the grassroots level.
A former lecturer on AIDS at Harvard School of Public Health, he spoke about adolescent HIV/AIDS nationally and internationally at conferences. He was the executive director and founder of TeenAIDS-PeerCorps, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit youth AIDS advocacy organization with its headquarters in Norfolk, Virginia. His latest initiative was conducting live public HIV testing of youth in the U.S. in order to end the stigma of AIDS among young people. He was known to youth as "Dr. John."
Chittick died on April 5, 2017 in Ifalik, Micronesia at the age of 69.
Chittick was born and raised in Fitchburg, Massachusetts. As a teenager he attended Applewild School (1963) and Deerfield Academy in Deerfield, Massachusetts (1966). He went to Austria as an exchange student before attending Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, where he earned his B.A. in History and Government In 1980 he obtained a M.S. in Visual Studies from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he also taught an experimental film course.
Chittick went on to the Harvard University Graduate School of Education, earning his second Master's, which focused on a model for HIV education and the efficacy of school prevention programs. He then received his doctorate (Ed.D.) from Harvard in Education and Human Psychology in 1994. His 550-page doctoral thesis, titled "Adolescents and AIDS: the Third Wave" predicted a youth pandemic of youth HIV/AIDS, and included interviews with many leading experts in the field at the time.
Prior to starting work in youth HIV/AIDS education, Chittick was active in politics in his hometown of Fitchburg, Massachusetts. In 1969, when the legal voting age was 21, Chittick became the youngest elected official in Massachusetts when he won a seat on the Fitchburg City Council at 21. Two years later he ran for mayor of Fitchburg and came in second out of a field of six candidates. He served as the director of Friendship Village, a community center for disadvantaged children.
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