In an AHFter Hours first, we meet three AHF affiliates and get an in-depth look at how AHF works with like-minded individuals and organizations around the country. It’s all about enhancing capabilities and making change happen.
The Amazing Affiliates
Working hard and working together to accomplish more
GUEST BIOS:
Rosemary Lopez is the Executive Director of the AIDS Center of Queens County.
Gregory Noone is Executive Director of Thursday’s Child of Long Island.
Ingrid Floyd is Executive Director of Iris House, as well as interim Executive Director of WORLD.
CORE TOPICS + DETAILS:
[2:02] - AHF & ACQC: THE PERFECT MATCH
How affiliate relationships complete the puzzle
Ten years ago, AIDS Center of Queens County offered comprehensive wraparound services, but not medical and pharmacy services that could so deeply benefit their people. They became affiliates of AHF in order to take advantage of those capabilities, and in turn allow their patients to access these services to their benefit.
[3:49] - Looking Forward to the Future
Why organizations adopt affiliate roles with AHF
Before joining with AHF, Iris House was at a crossroads. Their leadership was questioning what the future of the organization looked like, and weren’t finding success with any of the organizations they were meeting with at the time. Ultimately, the strategic capabilities that an affiliate relationship with AHF allowed for made all the difference in helping Iris House meet their goals for the future.
[6:27] - New Kid on the Block
AHF’s newest affiliate on joining with the organization
Thursday’s Child is the newest AHF affiliate, and Executive Director Gregory Noone says that despite their different cultures, AHF and Thursday’s Child share an identical mission that makes them the perfect fit. Is the collaboration always seamless? Of course not. But the unified vision for the future brings out the best in everyone from both sides of the affiliation.
[9:07] - What Does It Mean to Be an Affiliate of AHF?
Hearing from three distinct voices
What does an affiliate partnership with AHF look like? To Rosemary Lopez and ACQC, it looks like expanded programming, testing, food preparation capabilities, and comprehensive services. For Ingrid Floyd and her team at Iris House, it means having a true partner both in doing the work and in reaching the community. And for Gregory Noone, it means that Thursday’s Child has access to a well of expertise that’s almost unmatched in the fight against AIDS and other public health & social justice issues.
RESOURCES:
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ABOUT AFTER HOURS:
The AIDS Healthcare Foundation is the world’s largest HIV/AIDS service organization, operating in 45 countries globally. The mission? Providing cutting-edge medicine and advocacy for everyone, regardless of ability to pay.
The After Hours podcast is an official podcast of the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, in which host Lauren Hogan is joined by experts in a range of fields to educate, inform, and inspire listeners on topics that go far beyond medical information to cover leadership, creativity, and success.
Learn more at: https://www.aidshealth.org
ABOUT THE HOST:
Lauren Hogan is the Associate Director of Communications for the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, and has been working in a series of roles with the Foundation since 2016. She’s passionate about increasing the public visibility of AIDS, the Foundation's critical work, and how everyday people can help join the fight to make cutting-edge medicine, treatment, and support available for anyone who needs it.
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Lauren Hogan:
Get unfiltered lessons from our leaders at AHF as we uncover real, raw stories of where we came from and where we are going. Join us for an unscripted look at the connections our senior leadership have to our mission core values and hot initiatives.
Lauren Hogan:
AHF is the world's largest HIV aids service organization operating in 45 countries globally, 16 states domestically, including DC and Puerto Rico. Our mission is to provide cutting edge medicine and advocacy, regardless of ability to pay.
Lauren Hogan:
Hello and welcome to the AHFter Hours Podcast. I'm your host Lauren Hogan, serving as your liaison to take you through this journey to learn more about AIDS Healthcare Foundation. Before we start the show, please make sure to remember to check out the show notes so you can follow along. Now, let's get started.
Lauren Hogan:
Well, good morning everyone and welcome back to another episode of the AHFter Hours Podcast. As always, I'm your host Lauren Hogan. And today we have a really special spotlight because I think this is the first time we're going to get an in depth look at some of our affiliates of AHF. So really quick, I just want to introduce our guests that we have today. Can you guys kind of go around and just say your name and which affiliate you are connected with for AHF? So Rosemary, I'm going to start with you.
Rosemary Lopez:
Rosemary Lopez, the AIDS Center of Queens County.
Lauren Hogan:
And Greg.
Gregory Noone:
Hi Lauren. My name is Gregory Noone. I'm the executive director of Thursday's Child of Long Island.
Lauren Hogan:
And Ingrid.
Ingrid Floyd:
Hi Lauren, I'm Ingrid Floyd. I am the executive director of Iris House and I am also the interim executive director of WORLD.
Lauren Hogan:
So Ingrid's bicoastal for those of you guys that don't know yet, but we'll get into that into the episode. Let's just kick it off right away. Rosemary, I'm going to come back to you first. Can you tell us a little bit about your role as executive director at ACQC and how the relationship with AHF kind of started?
Rosemary Lopez:
Okay, so AHF and ACQC, pretty much ACQC has been in existence since 1986, 36 years, much like AHF. We kind of about, we've been affiliated now for seven years, over seven years actually. It started way before that, like around nine years ago, 10 years ago, where we were having lunch meetings and discussing an affiliation. And over time it seemed like the perfect fit because ACQC has wraparound services, comprehensive wraparound services, but we didn't have medical and pharmacy and AHF came with that.
Rosemary Lopez:
So it's like the perfect family that we were able to really work together and service the entire Queens community, because ACQC has seven sites in Queens. And now we are currently in all the sites in Manhattan doing services. We've expanded many of our services to AHF, such as our Article 31 mental health clinic is now in the Brooklyn site. So we've been able to really work together as a team. I call it our family, our affiliate family, and it's been wonderful. For the last seven years, we've been able to, as Michael Weinstein always says, draw on a larger canvas that we did not have the funding to do before.
Lauren Hogan:
And Ingrid, I'm going to go to you next. Tell us a little bit about your role now as executive director at Iris House that's in New York and how that relationship started. And then my kind of follow-up would be, you're also ED over at WORLD and kind of how you manage both of those roles. Go ahead.
Ingrid Floyd:
Sure. As executive director at Iris House, I'm responsible for the operations of all of our sites and our programs. Iris House has our main site in central Harlem. We have a satellite housing program site that's also in Harlem. We have staff from our prevention team who operate out of the Bronx Healthcare Center, as well we also have a site in central New Jersey. I oversee all of our programs and our operations along with a great team of staff, volunteers and stipend workers.
Ingrid Floyd:
Our relationship at Iris House with AHF started during an interesting time when we were starting to consider what does our next chapter look like? And it was at a time when we knew that we needed to do something different. I was going through what I consider speed dating different organizations. It was kind of crazy because I always tell people I went on so many dinner dates and lunch dates and breakfast dates with people who we thought we had synergies with and that we were thinking about potentially merging or partnering or what that would look like. And someone said, "You really should consider AHF. Give them a serious look. Really think about them."
Ingrid Floyd:
And so I had the opportunity to meet with two of the AHF staff and learn more about what the affiliate model looked like and then came to conclude after meeting with Michael and after doing a lot of strategic discussions that it was the best model for us, given kind of all the other relationships that we had considered. And then in doing the role at WORLD, so I've been the executive director at WORLD now for August will be two years. It's been throughout the pandemic. I have been traveling between New York and WORLD, which is located in Oakland. So it's been a challenge.
Ingrid Floyd:
If you imagine traveling during COVID has definitely been a challenge being bicoastal, but I've been able to manage the two time zones by a lot of online meetings, a lot of Zoom, a lot of Microsoft Teams meetings and a lot of Google Chat. One of the things I've quickly learned is we use Google Chat often so that I can stay connected to them so they have immediate access to me without feeling like I'm gone or not there or away. And we have a great team of staff out there who are doing the work and I'm able to go out there. I fly out usually every four to six weeks on site for a week and then available to the staff and to the funders remotely while I'm back on the east coast.
Lauren Hogan:
Greg, I'm going to come to you next. You are the executive director of our newest affiliate, Thursday's Child. So very exciting. Tell us a little bit about your role and how Thursday's Child and AHF's relationship kind of merged.
Gregory Noone:
Well, it's actually a really interesting story and I've thought hard about this and I still have sometimes a little bit difficult way of putting this into words. Because basically AHF and Thursday's Child almost come from two different cultures, yet what unites us is our shared mission, which is essentially identical. And so this is where we came to an agreement seven months ago, not seven years ago, and this is I can state with all honesty this is due to essentially one man, John Galletta, the salesperson from New York City and the Long Island region who is nothing short of a good and kind and definition of a gentleman and probably the best salesperson that AHF has ever had.
Gregory Noone:
Our missions, our stars aligned a couple years ago when we were looking for funding for one of our newest supportive service programs, a long term survivors program. As a lot of you know, long term survivors has become an issue. It's become a thing. It's come to the forefront now that, for all the right reasons, less people are dying. By definition than people are living longer. We heard it from a lot of our clients that loneliness, difficulty with relationships getting out of the house has really come to the forefront, especially as people are aging, speaking as one who is aging himself because I was with Thursday's Child since it's founding back in 1989.
Gregory Noone:
We remained independent supportive service's agency that focused solely on serving people with HIV and AIDS. I'm happy to report that after all these years, we have not suffered mission creep. We still remain true to our ideals and now we can broaden them and serve more now that we've partnered with AHF. So John Galletta assisted us getting an AHF grant, and then literally for the past two years, we've been talking on and off and then another shout out to our amazing Northern bureau chief, Donna Tempesta, who we've really had toe to toe negotiations throughout the entire course of the summer and finally signed the agreement that went into effect on November 1st last year.
Gregory Noone:
And it's been a little rough at first getting to joining the new systems, the new cultures of work cultures. But I have to say I've never been prouder of working with an amazing group of people and so far so good. It's been really, really beneficial. It's all in service of our clients.
Lauren Hogan:
Mm. You guys all have different vantage points of being affiliates of AHF. I think Rosemary, you guys have been an affiliate the longest at this point. I want to ask you in your different perspectives, what does it mean to be an affiliate of AHF? And I'm curious to see you guys' answers. So Rosemary, I'm going to kick you back to you to go first.
Rosemary Lopez:
I think for us is to really be able to expand our programming that we have been able to do together, such as our testing, our prep and pep, our food pantry alone, AHF has assisted us with a hundred thousand a year for the community. We're better able to service the community with AHF support. We work alongside, you know, it was over 10 years before we were able to have medical and pharmacy on site. It's like right now we have over 2,200 clients shared together between the healthcare center, the pharmacy in our citywide program.
Rosemary Lopez:
We're really doing comprehensive services here in Queens and in Manhattan and we're working collectively together. That's really what we've been able to do, as well as looking at a new site because our site that we're currently in we've outgrown. We are currently looking to move and looking at sites. But without AHF, without the increased funding that they support, we would not be able to do it.
Rosemary Lopez:
That's a reason, again, that we really affiliated it with AHF for a medical provider was that if you know state and city funding, they drop off three months, four months, we have to wait for payroll sometimes and we couldn't afford to continue to do it, even though we're self-sufficient and we have all the money in our budgets, that delay caused us to delay payrolls. Since AHF has been part of us, we've haven't had a delayed payroll.
Lauren Hogan:
Ingrid, I'm going to go to you next. What do you think in your purview what it means to be an affiliate of AHF?
Ingrid Floyd:
Iris House has been an affiliate since 2019. So July 1st actually will be our anniversary, our three year anniversary of being affiliated with AHF. For us, it's been about partnership, really having a true partner with doing the work and a true partner in the community. Being able to offer, for instance, at the Bronx Healthcare Center, being able to quickly get people access to medical care, being able to work more closely with the pharmacy to understand if our clients are treatment adherent, being able to do events with the staff and the team out in the community. I think it's been great for us to be able to utilize and have an increased access to resources such as the marketing team to get collateral and materials created as an example. And as Rosemary said, being able to expand some of our programming, particularly through AHF funding.
Ingrid Floyd:
Most recently, we have been able to start a diabetes education program in collaboration with our food and nutrition program. We are able to do diabetes education for up to 40 to 50 people a year, people who are pre-diabetic and diabetic. And those who are living with HIV we know have increased comorbidities, particularly as it relates in communities of color to diabetes. And then we've been able to introduce our fresh market during COVID because we had an increased need for food. We do a fresh market produce stand several times a week in the community serving over in 2021, for example, we were able to serve over 2,500 households and over 6,000 people through our fresh market program. For us, it's really been about partnership, increasing our access to various resources and expanding our programming.
Lauren Hogan:
Greg.
Gregory Noone:
Oh gosh, the access to AHF's expertise has been invaluable over the past few months. Sure, we were holding our own and doing okay, but growth was near impossible. As Rosemary had talked about different issues in the past, we had suffered from a few of those as well. I cannot overstate, oh gosh, Susanna Preston out in LA, Roche Palileo in accounting, Loretta Pelham, Jen Grillo, Jen Aloy. These folks have professionally upgraded our agency in manners that I could not have imagined when we first started discussions a year ago. I'm very grateful to them.
Gregory Noone:
They have provided this unique assistance to us that we could never have done on our own. We've managed now to grow to a staff of five persons with four different programs and we're considering hiring a sixth this year because we got a minor increase in funding from our grants. The expertise that AHF brings along to us has enabled us to be more professional. It has enabled us to continue doing what we do, being the sole dedicated organization, nonprofit agency serving people living with HIV on Long Island. We are very, very grateful for this partnership and those experts in our field have enabled us to be better, do more.
Lauren Hogan:
You guys collectively have gone through all of the different, amazing services that you have, but I just want to highlight and emphasize all that you guys do as our respective affiliates. If you guys can just go down the list really quick. You've mentioned food pantries, you've mentioned pharmacies, obviously your AID service organizations. But just quickly, could you run through all of the different services that your individual affiliates provide? Greg, I'm actually going to kick it back to you to start.
Gregory Noone:
Oh, our two Ryan White funded programs provide an HIV positive early intervention service, which is a short term intensive case management linkage to care combination service, which is extraordinary. Our second one funded by them is emergency financial assistance, which provides direct financial assistance in the form of supermarket store cards. We're funded by the county of Suffolk for two programs, we call it ASAP, an AID services access program, and TAP testing as prevention. It's brand new. For the first time in our 30 year history, we now provide HIV testing through the good folks at the Suffolk County legislature.
Gregory Noone:
Our ASAP program includes a variety of services from safety net. If you come to me with a problem, I don't care what it is, whether it's a vet bill, whether it's your rent, whether you need help with your landlord, whether you need negotiations, benefits, referral information, we do it all. We are the experts in the field, anything that's HIV related service.
Gregory Noone:
We also were the first in the region to provide an independent supportive housing program. Others have come along and gotten bigger and better, but we still plug along. We have three apartments that we have very low rents for our clients, long term survivors program. Gosh, what else do... I'm forgetting a couple different things, but we are just so proud to be the people where a person with HIV can come to in privacy and be treated with dignity and respect regardless of what the service is.
Lauren Hogan:
Ingrid, do you mind doing it for both of your affiliates that you oversee?
Ingrid Floyd:
Sure. For Iris House, we have services that what we consider comprehensive support services. We have a large housing program where we have 176 units of contracted housing through programs, such as HOPWA, Housing Opportunities for People with HIV, HASA which is the New York City HIV AIDS Service Administration. And those housing programs are for people who are living with HIV.
Ingrid Floyd:
We also have funded housing through New York City 1515, which is focused on people with substance use and mental health diagnoses who are not HIV positive. And so our housing programs all provide case management services and maintenance services for clients who are in those programs. We have a large food and nutrition program at Iris House where we are a New York City food pantry and soup kitchen. So we provide meals four days a week, as well as food pantry to not just our HIV positive clients, but also to the community.
Ingrid Floyd:
And for our HIV positive clients, we offer a client choice food pantry. They actually are able to come and select the items they would like as a part of food pantry each week. We do nutrition health education through one-on-one education with a dietician, as well as group nutrition education. And I mentioned our diabetes program, which is also a part of our food nutrition services. We have a large prevention program where we do HIV, STI testing out in the community through our mobile unit, as well as on site. We do HIV education as in substance use education through several SAMSA funded programs. Some of those which we focus on young people who are ages 13 to 29. And then we also offer our emotional wellness groups, which are our version of our support groups. And we do those in English and in Spanish coed, as well as single gender groups.
Ingrid Floyd:
And then for our New Jersey programs, we do prevention services, HIV testing, and SCI testing, and a lot of education in the community, particularly with some of the schools in our local area. For WORLD out in Oakland, WORLD focuses on women who are living with HIV. So we have programs that are specific such as our Ryan White psychosocial support groups, our Ryan White supported programs that connect clients to different referrals that they need, whether those be medical, pharmacy, food, housing. We also offer support groups one day a week. We've expanded to offer fitness classes as well as cooking classes. And then we also have our community programs where we have COVID grants so that we do COVID vaccine education in the community, as well as prep education out in the local community.
Lauren Hogan:
Rosemary.
Rosemary Lopez:
Well, we have 32 programs throughout Queens and Manhattan. We get city, federal and state dollars. We have case management services. We have a health home and we're really the premier HIV organization in Queens. We not only service people that are HIV positive, but we service people that have chronic medical conditions. We have transitional and permanent housing. We have 180 apartments that we rent in the community for our clients, but we also have 50 transitional beds at the Jamaica Y for those that are homeless, which are directly referrals from HASA, which is a large LGBTQ population that is serviced at our transitional housing.
Rosemary Lopez:
We also have harm reduction and syringe exchange services that are out in the community every day dispensing not only syringes, but food, but clothing, especially during the pandemic. Queens was basically a virtual, there was nobody out, but ACQC was out and our mobile units were out dispensing all the needs, all these food, clothing to the community. We also do prevention and health education. We have a syringe exchange. I'm sorry. We have a prevention grant funded by AHF that we do testing out in the community. So we're out there every day. We do 2,000 tests in a given year just through AHF, but we do testing through other programs also here at ACQC.
Rosemary Lopez:
We have legal services. We represent clients in court. We do a lot of work around immigration. We have five staff attorneys and no one is charged for any services that come here for our legal services. We also have food pantry and nutritional services where they see people that are HIV positive, see a licensed nutritionist, get a diet that they should adhere to with their medications, get specialized food pantry. We have that here.
Rosemary Lopez:
We also have counseling. We have an Article 31 mental health clinic. Anyone coming in can receive mental health services in any one of ACQCs site or AHF in Brooklyn because we expanded the license now to include Brooklyn. And we do have HIV testing, Hep C testing, STI testing. We do prep and pep. We do the gamut and working alongside AHF. But the biggest one that we also have is our LGBT homeless youth drop-in center in Woodside that's not funded, that we continue to get dollars from city council to run.
Rosemary Lopez:
Any youth that's homeless can come there and get a shower, get a meal. We try to connect them with housing. This has been operational now for about eight years. I have to say that we do great work with the transgender community. We service about 50 women on a Friday night in our exchange that we totally don't have funding for, but connecting them to services and figuring out what their needs are in the community. I could go on and on, but I don't want to go over the time. But we do a lot of comprehensive work here.
Lauren Hogan:
Needless to say, you guys are all very busy in your respective areas of work that you do. Thank you quickly for running down that amazing list. But we are almost at time. So lastly, I just want to ask you guys, within your affiliates, what are you guys most excited about for the upcoming year with your programs? And Rosemary, we can start back again with you.
Rosemary Lopez:
I think what I'm looking for is an expansion of housing because that's a number one need of our clients coming in. When we first started servicing the community, it was medical and nutrition or food and now it's housing. However we can expand our housing here in New York would really be good for the community and our clients.
Lauren Hogan:
And Greg, I'm going to switch it up. I'm going to go to you next.
Gregory Noone:
Before we close out, I would be remiss to talk about my amazing team and staff. Carrie is probably one of the smartest persons I know. He is a fine young man who has made Thursday's Child so much better in the past 10 years. Our George is a licensed clinical social worker who has brought depth and expertise to us. Our Daniel has taken over from the sad loss of my long term office manager, Pat who passed away last year, and Daniel is returning and going for his master's degree in September. And our brand new Sabrina is a native Spanish speaker who is going to take our testing program, which is by the way, without restrictions, we have none of the SAMSA or CDC or New York state restrictions. We can test anyone, anytime, anywhere. Thank you, Eddie Dillard in Brooklyn for your help.
Gregory Noone:
And this team is witness to the slow but steady growth. And we are grateful for AHF to be a part of this slow but steady growth. We hope in the coming years to further deepen what we already do well. In these days of inflation and high cost of living, we are able to help more people with more supportive services to maintain their HIV medical care. That's it in a nutshell.
Lauren Hogan:
Beautiful. Ingrid.
Ingrid Floyd:
For Iris House, we're really looking forward to and excited about this new housing initiative in New York City and collaboration with AHF that I am hoping, fingers crossed we would be able to announce very soon. We've been working on this for about a month now and really excited about what that will bring to the table.
Ingrid Floyd:
As well we are hoping that we will be able to expand our Plainfield site to include medical and pharmacy services in partnership with AHF this year. Marlene Lalota and I have been anxious about that project for two years now and trying to find space. And then for WORLD, I am very, very excited that we hope to have a new executive director and I won't be traveling back and forth to the west coast much longer. So trying to complete our executive director search and really hopeful that we will find the right candidate that will help to lead WORLD into its next phase of their evolution.
Lauren Hogan:
Well, thank you guys so much for joining us today. I have to say it's always insightful to hear what our amazing affiliates are doing here at AHF. We appreciate you and thank you for all of the amazing work that you do.
Gregory Noone:
Thank you.
Rosemary Lopez:
Thank you. Happy Pride.
Ingrid Floyd:
Happy Pride.
Lauren Hogan:
Thank you so much for joining us. If you enjoyed this episode and you'd like to help support the show, please subscribe, share it with your friends, like, post about it on social media, or leave a rating and review. Follow us on Instagram at AHFter Hours, and see you next time.