Diane Arneth, Executive Director of the Community Health Action of Staten Island for the past sixteen years, is one of the founding members of the organization. The agency originally named the Staten Island AIDS Task Force was founded in 1988 by a group of concerned Staten Island providers, community members and persons living with AIDS. The all volunteer effort to increase community education, services and advocacy received funding in October 1989 through the New York State Department of Health AIDS Institute. This funding established the agency as the Staten Island Community Service Program, the regional provider of coordinated AIDS services for Staten Island.

Ms. Arneth received a BSN in nursing from Hunter College and an Executive MPA from Baruch College. A Staten Islander by birth, she has been active throughout her life as an advocate. She was a volunteer youth organizer with the Staten Island Peace Coalition from 1967-1970 and represented Staten Island on the Coalition for Community Controlled Day Care in the 1970s. She helped found the Staten Island Teen Pregnancy Network in 1981 and the AIDS Task Force in 1988, and served on their original Steering Committees and Boards of Directors.

She was a member of the original NYC Board of Education AIDS Advisory Committee which urged then Chancellor Fernandez to implement a comprehensive AIDS education program in the NYC schools which led directly to the comprehensive AIDS education and condom availability program.

In the mid 1990’s, she served for four years as an appointee on the Mayor's HIV Health and Human Services Planning Council and was the elected Community Co-Chair for two of those years. Among her many awards are those presented by New York Urban League, Staten Island Branch; Latino Civic Association; Staten Island Children’s Museum; University Hospice; the Commissioner of the New York City Department of Health; the Democratic County Committee; Coalition of Staten Island Women’s Organizations; the Young Dems and the Public Health Association of New York City. In 2007, she was named a Staten Island Advance Woman of Achievement.