Whether you like it or not, Mazzoni Center is the Philadelphia area’s largest LGBTQ healthcare provider, with a staff of 165 serving more than 35,000 patients annually. In a city with some of the area’s largest hospitals, that’s saying something.
Mazzoni Center opened in 1979 and was on the frontlines of the AIDS crisis, incorporating HIV-related services just two years after opening. The center opened the first HIV-testing site in Pennsylvania in 1985, the first housing for people living with HIV the following year and, in 1989, the first food bank for those living with the virus.
Services have vastly expanded since then. Today, Mazzoni Center aims to provide “quality comprehensive health and wellness services in an LGBTQ-focused environment, while preserving the dignity and improving the quality of life of the individuals we serve.”
That mission is now endangered by a series of crises over the past two years that can only be characterized as systemic. While changing faces at the top, the leadership consistently remains tone-deaf as to how its actions come across. In recent weeks, employees have been seen giving management the finger on social media; writing open letters denouncing Mazzoni Center’s leadership; leaking internal documents to the media; staging what look like walk-outs, though carefully timed for lunch hour so as not to violate union rules; rampaging through the open-layout offices denouncing management; and calling for the resignation of CEO Lydia Gonzalez Sciarrino. A poorly handled firing this week, which sparked the recent demonstrations, and subsequent lack of comment after repeated requests by PGN, don’t do much to change that image. Mazzoni management allowed for this environment, one that more than a half-dozen employees told PGN this week makes them uncomfortable, and even fearful, in a workplace where they just want to do their jobs.
This week on the front page, we try to unravel some of what is happening on the inside. But first, an urgent memo to the upper management of Mazzoni Center: Get your shit together. A lot of people need you.