Mark Illeman, FNP has been involved in the care of people with HIV/AIDS since he was a Nurse Practitioner student at U.C.Davis in 1981. He was a student of Dr. Conant’s at that time. It was at that time that Dr. Conant brought together the leading thinkers and clinicians in San Francisco to study a surprising explosion of Kaposi’s Sarcoma in gay men. This was called the K.S. Study Group– that later became the UCSF AIDS Clinical Research Center. Dr. Conant was instrumental in obtaining funding from the State of California to support UCSF thanks to the foresight and support of Willie Brown, then Speaker of the Assembly in Sacramento.
When Mark completed his training in 1983, Dr. Conant hired him as his first Nurse Practitioner in his practice. At that time there were sick and dying men with AIDS sitting in the waiting room with men and women for routine dermatology care. The two practices soon split and Mark took on the responsibility of overseeing the HIV Practice that was opened at Mt. Zion Hospital in the late 1980′s. He and Dr. Conant hired a number of Infectious Disease Physicians and Nurse Practitioners to care for a wave of men and women with AIDS. He and Dr. Conant participated in some of the first clinical studies of the disease, and traveled to national and international meetings to educate the medical community on the latest treatments and clinical findings. There were very few antiviral drugs in those days– noone survived more than 18 months after diagnosis.
Mark was on the Board of Directors when Dr. Conant started the Conant Foundation. The purpose has always been to educate the gay community on how to prevent infection and if infected, how to survive as best as possible with the latest information from clinical trials and invited experts. Mark continues to serve on the Board in his capacity as a clinician in the community and an active participant in other organizations–formerly on the Board of Directors of the San Francisco AIDS Foundation for 6 years, and presently on the Board of Directors of Project Inform.
Mark is presently working in private practice with Gary Feldman, MD at California Pacific Medical Center where he continues to specialize in HIV/AIDS and is an active member of the American Academy of HIV Medicine.
