HEALTHCARE/MEDICARE/NEW YORK: “Organizations working with AIDS and HIV patients are a well-established presence in New York City. But as infection rates have dropped and improved medicines have enabled people with the virus to live longer, some groups are adapting their service models and expanding their reach, taking on new health issues from heart disease to heroin addiction.
Until recently, Manhattan-based nonprofit Alliance for Positive Change was known as the AIDS Service Center NYC, with a mission to provide New Yorkers with HIV prevention, treatment and support services.
The Alliance, founded 27 years ago, still does that work. But in the past year, it also took over the operations of the Lower East Side Harm Reduction Center, another decades-old organization focused on reducing the spread of HIV and AIDS among injection drug users.
As part of a total expansion, the nonprofit now helps people with drug addiction and mental illness, as well clients with chronic diseases like hepatitis, diabetes and heart disease. Roughly half of the Alliance’s 5,000 clients don’t have HIV, though almost all are at high risk for contracting the virus…
Ms. Duke [Alliance CEO] says the organization, which has an annual budget of $22 million, decided to broaden its offerings after looking at the direction of health-care finance and delivery after New York’s recent redesign of Medicaid, which focuses on care coordination instead of fee for service.”
-Melanie Grayce West, “New York HIV Nonprofits Expand Services to Other Health Issues,” The Wall Street Journal online, Oct. 15, 2017 08:13pm