Looking for LGBTQ-friendly health providers or access to PrEP (Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis)?
Below are just ten of the more established and groundbreaking clinics…
Howard Brown Health Center in Chicago
The Howard Brown Health Center is Chicago’s go-to destination for sexual health walk-in services, including full STI screening, along with vaccinations for hepatitis A and B.
It offers PEP (to be taken within three days of a risky sexual contact) and PrEP–both courses of medication can help prevent someone from acquiring HIV. It has financial assistance programs to help access PrEP and can offer the periodic lab work those on PrEP should have to monitor for rare side-effects, such as kidney function tests. Howard Brown has four clinics in Chicago.
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“In normal times, we provide same-day starts for all of our PrEP appointments for walk-in visits, so folks are able to meet with a provider, meet with a PrEP navigator, and get their prescription filled all on the same day,” Michael Castro, Howard Brown’s Biomedical HIV Interventions Manager told Queerty.
In the wake of COVID-19, it’s also now offering increased telehealth services because it regards the provision of PrEP as an essential service.
Callen-Lorde Community Health Center in New York City
Callen-Lorde is one of the most well-respected healthcare providers in the world. Headquartered at 356 West 18th Street, it also offers mental health services at the Thea Spyer Center, 230 West 17th St, and has a smaller facility at 3144 3rd Ave, Bronx, NY 10451.
Callen-Lorde has a history dating back half a century. “What has not changed in 50 years,” said executive director Wendy Stark in its most recent annual report, “is our commitment to serving people regardless of ability to pay, our passion for health equity and justice for our diverse LGBTQ communities and people living with HIV, and our belief that access to healthcare is a human right and not a privilege.”
It offers a wide range of HIV services, including testing, PrEP and PEP (if you are on PrEP, you won’t need PEP). It also runs its HOTT (Health Outreach to Teens) program, aimed at those aged 13 to 21 years.
The Los Angeles LGBT Center
The Los Angeles LGBT Center has several branches in Los Angeles and one in West Hollywood. It offers a vast range of services, including medical services and HIV prevention. It offers rapid HIV testing (the results for gonorrhea, chlamydia, and syphilis take up to a week) and can even offer accurate testing just seven days after exposure to HIV. It encourages all sexually active people to be tested once every three months.
It also offers affordable or free PrEP, with a dedicated PrEP site online, including a quiz for you to take to ascertain whether you are in a high-risk group and could benefit from taking the preventative medication.
Strut San Francisco
Strut is the San Francisco AIDS Foundation health and wellness center in the heart of the Castro. San Francisco AIDS Foundation was founded in 1982 – only the second HIV service agency of its kind in the United States – and now has over 200 employees offering a diverse range of services to tens of thousands of clients.
Given its history, it’s not surprising that it’s been at the forefront of the fight against HIV. That work continues today, offering sexual health screening and treatment, HIV testing, PrEP, substance use services, harm reduction supplies, counseling, and community events. Among its current priorities, it’s dedicated to creating a comprehensive network of services for people over the age of 50 who are living with HIV, reflecting the fact more and more people are living normal life spans with the virus.
Strut is located at 470 Castro Street.
Massachusetts: Fenway Health in Boston
Fenway Health has a history stretching back to 1971 when it was formed as a community health center. Today, it is the largest LGBTQ-associated center in the country: Its Ansin Building home at 1340 Boylston Street (opened in 2009), has ten stories, 9,300 square meters of space, and more than 450 paid staff.
It was among the first centers in the US to respond to the AIDS crisis in the early 1980s, diagnosing the first person with AIDS in New England in 1981. It continues to lead the way in HIV care and prevention, but beyond this, it offers, ‘For people, not for profit’ health services to many communities in Boston.
Legacy Community Health in Houston
Legacy Community Health Services was formed in 2005 by the merging of the Montrose Clinic and The Assistance Fund. The Montrose was a gay men’s health clinic set up in 1978. It grew in response to the AIDS crisis of the 1980s.
Today, Legacy Health continues to serve communities that face health disparities. Its wide range of services includes sexual health and HIV prevention (it took over Houston’s Center for AIDS in 2012), including HIV testing and access to PrEP.
“PrEP will really help us in the longterm get HIV under control, or even get to 90-90-90,” Dr. Vandana Shrikanth, infection control officer with Legacy Community Health, told Queerty when asked how much of a game-changer she felt the medication is.
90-90-90 is a target set out for all nations by UNAIDS: to have at least 90% of people who are HIV positive tested, 90% of those who are positive on treatment, and 90% of them HIV undetectable. It’s believed that hitting this target will significantly help to lower further HIV transmission and eventually eliminate it.
“PrEP is going to help us minimize new infections,” says Shrikanth.
Legacy Health has several clinics in Houston and neighboring Beaumont, with its Midtown Main clinic (2401 Main St., Houston) focused on sexual health.
Whitman-Walker Health in Washington, DC
Whitman-Walker Health has a history stretching back to 1973. The arrival of the AIDS epidemic led to it being one of the first health providers in the DC area to provide testing and treatment for the virus. Since that time it has continued to champion prevention work and health support, treating all patients with “dignity, respect, and love.”
Mazzoni Center Philadelphia
Founded in 1979, the Mazzoni Center is an LGBTQ-focussed health center for the citizens of Philadelphia. With the arrival of HIV and AIDS in the early 1980s, it incorporated HIV prevention into its core service provision – becoming the first site in Philadelphia to offer HIV testing.
It continues to be at the forefront of HIV care and prevention in the city, including providing sexual health testing, PrEP, and PEP. It offers help to around 35,000 service users annually.
You can find the center at 1348 Bainbridge Street, Philadelphia.
Someone Cares in Atlanta
Someone Cares celebrates its 24th anniversary this year. Founded by CEO, Ronnie Bass, it has traditionally focused its resources on reducing HIV in transgender and gay men of color communities – both gropus show higher incidences of new infections. Over time it has expanded its services, and now also offers treatment for drug and alcohol addiction, and mental health counseling, among other programs.
It has clinics in Marietta, Georgia, and in downtown Atlanta, serving the Atlanta Metropolitan area. It offers HIV and STD testing, and it can help service users to access PrEP.
Kansas Care Health Center in Kansas City
A popular health center dedicated to providing, “quality, affordable, integrated health services to everyone in the community,” Kansas City Health Center provides full sexual-health and HIV services. This includes STI and HIV testing, access PrEP. Besides helping people to remain HIV negative, it offers a wide range of services for those living with HIV – all to achieve viral suppression and live a long, healthy, normal life. This includes group work with peer educators who are themselves living with HIV. It offers services from four locations in Kansas City, along with testing in the community.
For information on welcoming clinics across the US, check this state-by-state list from the CDC.
hoosier1969
I always take any clothing, etc. I wish to donate to the Brown Elephant; a resale store that supports the Howard Brown Center. Their stores are also a great place to shop!
dannysax
They should have added the Kind Clinic in Austin TX to that list. They got me started on Prep with Truvada, then Descovy. An amazing group of health personnel and doctors.
MrMoby
Another that should be included is the Desert AIDS Project (DAP) an incredible agency that provides a panoply of services to the entire community in the Coachella Valley.
vinnieboiblue
All the clinics whether mentioned or not, deserve recognition for the care and compassion they serve to not just the gay and lesbian community but the whole public. We would not have gotten this far without them and those lives lost but not forgotten, who also had a hand in making HIV/AIDS a chronically managed disease and not a death sentence. In Hawaii on Oahu we have the Clint Spencer AIDS Clinic managed in conjunction w/JABSOM(John A.Burns School of Medicine/UH). Great team of doctors and nurses who have made it their mission to serve with the aloha spirit, and compassion. Even interns treat you like family(ohana), and not an outcast. Because of this, the stigma has weakened.
CityguyUSA
PreP is a fraud as far as I’m concerned. If you use a condom you’ll be better off because there are no side effects or damage to your organs. You don’t need a prescription and it won’t appear in your health record. Condoms are readily available and you don’t have to use one everyday but you can or you can use multiples a day and your wallet will thank you.
Yooper
Get down off your high horse. When it comes to HIV prevention, do what’s best for you, and don’t judge others.
Mark Behar
PrEP is not a fraud. It works to prevent HIV infection when used correctly. From Wikipedia: “In law, fraud is intentional deception to secure unfair or unlawful gain, or to deprive a victim of a legal right.”
Some people with allergies to latex rubber cannot tolerate the commonly available condom, and may not be aware of or able to afford the non-latex varieties.
It is reasonable and understandable to critique big pharma (Gilead Sciences produces Truvada and Descovy for PrEP) for how they profit from their costly medications, but the other side of the story is that Gilead is a large funder of LGBT television programs as well as community activities such as annual pride celebrations, and other activities. Remember, these used to be mostly sponsored by tobacco and alcohol companies, local G&L bars in the past.
Kangol2
I praise all of these institutions. They are beacons of light, and have been for decades.
Yooper
You said it! There are too many to mention, some are gone, others new, they all have made a significant impact from the early days.
Mark Behar
Disappointing and surprising that you failed to mention Milwaukee’s Brady East STD (BESTD) Clinic, which is unique among the others. It is one of the oldest, running continuously since 1976 as a men’s (mostly gay men) STD clinic (diagnosis and treatment), and HIV counseling and testing. All volunteer staff, providers, and board of directors. Several decades ago, it divested many of it’s AIDS education and action services, and that group became the Milwaukee AIDS Project, which then evolved into the AIDS Resource Center of Wisconsin, and it’s most recent incarnation, Vivent Health, one of the ONLY AIDS Clinical & Service facilities in the country that operates in multiple states: Wisconsin, Colorado, & Missouri. REMARKABLE!