Christine Mary Johnsen

Christine Johnsen died of cardiac arrest at Cape Cod Hospital on 12 October 2026. She was 80. Her obituary was published by The Provincetown Independent on 21 October.

She was survived by her husband, Alan Balsam, of Eastham and Cambridge; her daughter Mari Larangeira, Mari's husband Jed Brown and their children Isabelle and Rowan; her sister Lauri McCue; and her brother Bill Johnsen. She was predeceased by her daughter Tara Larangeira. In lieu of flowers, her family asked for donations to the Healing Our Community Collaborative. Funeral or memorial arrangements were not announced in the published obituary.

Christine Mary Johnsen was born on Staten Island, New York, on 24 June 1946. Her father, Walter Johnsen, worked for the Richmond Gas Company, and her mother, Marjorie Johnsen, was a homemaker who also worked for the New York City Department of Buildings. She attended P.S. 17 and Curtis High School.

She began training at the Bellevue Hospital School of Nursing but left after about a year. Her longtime friend Marguerite Fulton-Newton said she "had a zest for life that didn't match the old-time hardcore nurses". The two hitchhiked down the coast to San Francisco together, the first of several adventures that also included a road trip across Canada and a hitchhiking journey through the French Pyrenees. She later earned advanced degrees in nursing and epidemiology from Empire State University, Columbia University's School of Public Health, Northeastern University's School of Nursing and a university in East Sussex, England.

Johnsen built her career in infectious disease prevention. She worked as a researcher on the hepatitis vaccine and served as the epidemiologist at Rikers Island at the height of the AIDS crisis. At the time she lived in Greenwich Village, and her husband later recalled that she watched her neighbours dying around her, an experience that drove her commitment to HIV and AIDS work for the rest of her career.

After moving to Massachusetts she worked for the state prison system. In 1997 she founded the Healing Our Community Collaborative in Cambridge to support women living with HIV and AIDS. Her husband explained that she had realised women, particularly women of colour, were not being included in clinical trials and other initiatives, so she and a few fellow nurses created a way for women to take control and make their voices heard. She regarded it as one of her proudest accomplishments. At the end of her career she taught at Bunker Hill Community College.

In San Francisco Johnsen met her first husband, Crispin Larangeira. They married in 1969, had two daughters, Tara and Mari, and divorced in 1984. In the late 1980s, at a conference in Chicago, she met Alan Balsam, then Brookline's public health commissioner, at a blues club. They spent 37 years together, 35 of them married, settling in Cambridge, spending summers in Wellfleet and buying a cottage in Eastham in 2014.

On Cape Cod she enjoyed kayaking at Campground Beach and Jemima Pond and browsing the Wellfleet Flea Market, and she loved Provincetown, where friends said she was a strong supporter of gay rights. She travelled with her daughter Mari to Costa Rica, India and Egypt, where a desert horse ride ended with her switching to a camel. Mari described her as "funny, eclectic, unconventional, and opinionated", a woman who kept close friendships from every stage of life. She was politically engaged and took part in protests, including recent No Kings rallies.

Johnsen's lasting contribution was the Healing Our Community Collaborative, which she founded to give women living with HIV and AIDS a voice at a time when the response to the epidemic often overlooked them. Her family chose the organisation as the recipient of memorial gifts. Friends and family remembered her as warm, adventurous and committed to making the world a better place.