The national organization AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF) is a fixture in the HIV care community. Dating back to the 1980s, the organization provides an abundance of ground-breaking services that make it the largest provider of HIV/AIDS healthcare in the U.S. AHF offers HIV testing, medical treatment, prevention services including PrEP, care coordination, linkage to care, a pharmacy program and help in navigating it, care reentry specialists, insurance assistance services and everything in between.
“I think the impact has been enormous,” said Marlene LaLota, senior regional director of AHF. “I think we are a trusted brand and people know they can come to us. We have some of the best HIV specialists in the country. Our doctors consistently rank in the top in terms of viral load suppression rates, for example. Now we are very big on [providing] PrEP. Everything we offer is cutting edge.”
AHF has locations across 16 U.S. states and 45 countries. In the northeast, the organization operates sites in New York, Washington D.C., Baltimore, Cleveland, and a location in Philadelphia that is roughly three years old.
In addition to healthcare-related services, AHF is well-known for its large-scale advocacy initiatives around HIV, including access to medication, housing and COVID-19 safety. The organization also runs programs centered on healthy food access and syringe exchange.
In Philly, Gina Simoncini serves as AHF medical director, Tamara Appalsammy manages the AHF pharmacy and Jason Culler is program manager of the Public Health Division, including mobile and fixed site testing programs and the AHF wellness center. The staff is composed of two HIV testers, a linkage to care specialist and an outreach worker.
“Our goals are to find out-of-care persons, newly diagnosed persons and to get them into care within 24-48 hours,” Culler said. “For those who are high-risk, our goals are to get them on PrEP, and if you’ve been exposed to HIV, get them on PEP within 72 hours.”
Culler and his colleagues in the mobile testing program go into Philly neighborhoods that other local HIV orgs do not, including McPherson (Needle Park), F and Allegheny streets, Rock Ministries and St. Francis Inn, he said. The program is aimed at people who inject drugs, men who have sex with men (MSM) and anyone else who wants to know their HIV status.
“One of the reasons why it’s been successful is because right now we’re the only mobile program that’s doing HIV testing in Philadelphia,” Culler said. “We’re going into rougher neighborhoods that [organizations] are not touching, which is in South Philadelphia off of 50th and Chester area or 52nd and Market streets, and finding those people who have never heard about HIV, getting those people tested and getting them linked to care within 48 hours.”
AHF offers free STD testing including testing for HIV, chlamydia, gonorrhea and herpes, as well as free labs and treatment. For uninsured patients who have used up their Gilead Advancing Access Program benefits, AHF provides free PrEP services, too.
“The CDC has a thing where they want to end HIV, but how can we do that if we don’t offer free services,” Culler asked rhetorically. “We’re finding those [down low] people, people who have not been tested, Latinx women who would not usually go to a testing site. We’re going to those areas, finding those people and getting those people into care.”
In Philadelphia, the AHF team conducts more than 3,000 HIV tests annually. “We feel that testing is really critical, it’s really the first step,” LaLota said.
In light of making HIV testing easy, quick and accessible, AHF offers a one-minute HIV test. Those seeking to get tested through AHF no longer have to stand outside at a mobile site for half an hour waiting for their results in the cold or the heat, LaLota pointed out.
To help further drive that effort, AHF staff are seeking to open a local iteration of their thrift store called Out of the Closet. The organization runs about 20 versions of Out of the Closet around the U.S., which sell items like clothing, accessories and furniture, the proceeds of which are allocated right back to AHF services. Another feature of the thrift stores: free, one-minute HIV testing.
“There’s one here in Brooklyn where I am and it’s always busy,” LaLota said. “It’s testing non-stop, seven days a week. We do find people who are positive and suspected it, or maybe didn’t know it.”
If someone tests positive, staff can take them upstairs and link them to medical care right away. Plus, if the person in question needs other services like housing assistance, food or support related to domestic violence, AHF provides those services as well.
“We like to think of our model as really like a big hug,” LaLota said. “We find somebody and we wrap our arms around them with all of our services and everything that we do. That’s why people stay with us. We’ve only been in Philly, [less than] three years and we’re getting close to 600 patients, which is really great, especially considering that almost the whole time we were open it was a global pandemic.”
Getting HIV+ people into care and retaining them remain some of the biggest challenges for HIV care organizations in the U.S. In Philly, LaLota said, half of the people living with HIV have fallen out of care, which is one of the reasons AHF leadership brought their services to the city.
“We should all be asking ourselves, why is that,” LaLota said. “If we get them in the door, why aren’t we keeping them? What’s missing? That’s what we spend a lot of time thinking about, what can we do to keep them?”
AHF provides a Back in Care program that is dedicated to retention. When someone living with HIV who has been in care doesn’t show up for their doctor’s appointment for a year or two, AHF staff call those people, or go out in the community and try to find them. They also give people who have fallen out of care “welcome back” kits with gifts, including gift cards.
What’s more, AHF offers free Lyft rides to patients who don’t have the means to get to the wellness center.
“Not just heterosexuals, but also MSM,” Culler said. “We have a growing transgender population in Philadelphia [and] at AHF as well. We want to get those people to our healthcare centers, let them know that if you are homeless, we’re going to send our outreach worker to pick you up, bring you here, feed you and then take you back. We do care about our patients here and that’s one thing that I love about AHF that no other agency is doing right now.”