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Kevin Nelson, a Long-Time Advocate for Children and a Noted Health Care Leader, Joins Intact America’s Board of Directors

“Routine Male Newborn Circumcision Is Detrimental to a Child’s Well-Being,” Says Nelson, CEO of Aetna Better Health of New York, a CVS Health plan

Kevin Nelson(Tarrytown, New York—February 7, 2022)…Kevin Nelson, MPH, a health care executive and prominent advocate for children, has been elected to Intact America’s board of directors, announced Georganne Chapin, MPhil, JD, founding executive director of the anti-circumcision organization, today. Mr. Nelson, currently CEO at Aetna Better Health of New York, has spent more than 30 years in the health care and humanitarian fields and is passionate about protecting children’s health and welfare. He now will contribute to Intact America’s growing influence as the nation’s largest organization working to end the routine circumcision of baby boys.

“Kevin is a dynamic leader, strategic thinker, and change agent who moves organizations forward,” said Ms. Chapin, who has known Mr. Nelson for more than 30 years. “He cares deeply about making children’s lives better. For boys, that begins at birth by stopping hospitals from routinely circumcising newborns.”

Mr. Nelson commented that his attraction to Intact America’s mission comes naturally. He believes that routine male newborn circumcision is detrimental to a child’s well-being as it subjects baby boys to pain, trauma, and surgical risk when it is not medically necessary. The procedure has lifelong, adverse consequences for the baby and the man he will become.

The announcement about Mr. Nelson comes at a time when more Americans are questioning why the United States is the only Western country to routinely circumcise its baby boys. A 2020 Intact America public opinion poll found that nearly 1 out of 4 Americans favor keeping baby boys intact, up from just 1 out of 10 respondents in 2014.

“I compare circumcision to cigarettes and seatbelts,” Mr. Nelson said. “There was a time when smoking cigarettes was encouraged and we drove cars without seatbelts. But we know better now. As more Americans open their minds and learn the truth about routine newborn circumcision, it, too, will become a relic of the past.”

About Kevin Nelson  

Prior to becoming CEO of Aetna Better Health of New York, a CVS Health plan, Mr. Nelson was Vice President for Corporate Partnerships for the U.S. Fund for UNICEF. Before that, Mr. Nelson served as executive vice president and chief operating officer for Hudson Health Plan, where he launched one of the first Children’s Health Insurance Plans in New York State.

Mr. Nelson earned a BA in Healthcare Administration from the University of Pittsburgh and an MPH in Health Policy and Management from Yale University, which recently awarded him with a Yale Medal, the highest honor presented by the Alumni Association for outstanding individual service to the University. He also has been recognized by Yale School of Public Health, which bestowed on him its Distinguished Alumni Award.

Mr. Nelson’s community activities include serving as a board member for the adoption non-profit organization Spence-Chapin Services to Families and Children. He is a mentor for Big Brothers Big Sisters and has mentored children as part of the Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship. He is married, the father of two children, and lives in Yorktown Heights, New York.

 

Authors

  • Jeannie Ashford

    Jeannie Ashford is a writer, editor, public relations professional, and communications specialist who has supported Intact America for more than a decade. She received a BA in English Honors at Queens College, City University of New York, and an MS in Journalism from Columbia University.

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  • Georganne Chapin

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Marilyn

Marilyn Fayre Milos, multiple award winner for her humanitarian work to end routine infant circumcision in the United States and advocating for the rights of infants and children to genital autonomy, has written a warm and compelling memoir of her path to becoming “the founding mother of the intactivist movement.” Needing to support her family as a single mother in the early sixties, Milos taught banjo—having learned to play from Jerry Garcia (later of The Grateful Dead)—and worked as an assistant to comedian and social critic Lenny Bruce, typing out the content of his shows and transcribing court proceedings of his trials for obscenity. After Lenny’s death, she found her voice as an activist as part of the counterculture revolution, living in Haight Ashbury in San Francisco during the 1967 Summer of Love, and honed her organizational skills by creating an alternative education open classroom (still operating) in Marin County. 

After witnessing the pain and trauma of the circumcision of a newborn baby boy when she was a nursing student at Marin College, Milos learned everything she could about why infants were subjected to such brutal surgery. The more she read and discovered, the more convinced she became that circumcision had no medical benefits. As a nurse on the obstetrical unit at Marin General Hospital, she committed to making sure parents understood what circumcision entailed before signing a consent form. Considered an agitator and forced to resign in 1985, she co-founded NOCIRC (National Organization of Circumcision Information Resource Centers) and began organizing international symposia on circumcision, genital autonomy, and human rights. Milos edited and published the proceedings from the above-mentioned symposia and has written numerous articles in her quest to end circumcision and protect children’s bodily integrity. She currently serves on the board of directors of Intact America.

Georganne

Georganne Chapin is a healthcare expert, attorney, social justice advocate, and founding executive director of Intact America, the nation’s most influential organization opposing the U.S. medical industry’s penchant for surgically altering the genitals of male children (“circumcision”). Under her leadership, Intact America has definitively documented tactics used by U.S. doctors and healthcare facilities to pathologize the male foreskin, pressure parents into circumcising their sons, and forcibly retract the foreskins of intact boys, creating potentially lifelong, iatrogenic harm. 

Chapin holds a BA in Anthropology from Barnard College, and a Master’s degree in Sociomedical Sciences from Columbia University. For 25 years, she served as president and chief executive officer of Hudson Health Plan, a nonprofit Medicaid insurer in New York’s Hudson Valley. Mid-career, she enrolled in an evening law program, where she explored the legal and ethical issues underlying routine male circumcision, a subject that had interested her since witnessing the aftermath of the surgery conducted on her younger brother. She received her Juris Doctor degree from Pace University School of Law in 2003, and was subsequently admitted to the New York Bar. As an adjunct professor, she taught Bioethics and Medicaid and Disability Law at Pace, and Bioethics in Dominican College’s doctoral program for advanced practice nurses.

In 2004, Chapin founded the nonprofit Hudson Center for Health Equity and Quality, a company that designs software and provides consulting services designed to reduce administrative complexities, streamline and integrate data collection and reporting, and enhance access to care for those in need. In 2008, she co-founded Intact America.

Chapin has published many articles and op-ed essays, and has been interviewed on local, national and international television, radio and podcasts about ways the U.S. healthcare system prioritizes profits over people’s basic needs. She cites routine (nontherapeutic) infant circumcision as a prime example of a practice that wastes money and harms boys and the men they will become. This Penis Business: A Memoir is her first book.